Reflections on a deer stand

Deer hunting for me has changed over the years. When I was younger I was much less patient and much more obsessed with bringing home a huge rack. It used to be that I was climbing down out of my stand by 9:00 and start tramping around the woods looking for a better spot.

Now that I'm older I'm recognizing the value of just getting time away to myself, to take in the beauty of the woods and to pray. I'm in no hurry to leave the stand as in my younger days and last week found myself still in the stand at 11:00 with no real desire to come down. In fact I wasn't that eager to see a deer as that would interrupt a time of perfect solitude and peace.

It seems that God speaks to me in the woods more now as well, probably a direct result of waiting and being patient. I was feeling very anxious and vulnerable last week but couldn't pinpoint the reason why, so I talked to God about it. He reminded me of a great loss I'd recently suffered and how I was fearful that I might loose others in my life that I love. He then reminded me that his love is everlasting and unchanging and that I will never be completely on my own.

I took some comfort in that but still felt vulnerable about those in my life that I love. My children will one day leave home and start families of their own, my dad recently died and my mom moved to Portland. One day even my wife and I will be separated through disease or death. If God is unchanging, people are anything but. Change is a constant for us humans and someone who is there for you at one point in your life, may not be the next.

So God asked me what I believe about love, I said "It doesn't last". In one sense, this is true regarding human relationships, but that doesn't negate God's promise to love me with an everlasting love. The thing is, He so often love me through other people. As a youngster it was through my parents and later through friendships and through my wife and children. As a result it's easy to focus entirely on the love you are experiencing through those God put in your life and to forget that it's actually God's love flowing through them to you.

So when you lose someone you love, the pain is real and you need to mourn it, but that is not the end of the story. God is waiting to meet you in that place and to lead you deeper into his love. One chapter ends and another begins and as a believer there is always hope for what is yet to come. God never does things exactly the same way twice, He's far too creative for that, so you just need to learn to let go of some relationships and look for what He has next for you.

I drove home from the hunt feeling somehow stronger. I did finally get a deer, but I took home something much more worthwhile in my walk with God. My faith has grown through hardship and I know I'm a better man for it.

Don't just do something, sit there!

We are all familiar with the exhortation, "Don't just sit there, do something!" This productivity focused mindset of most Americans is so universal that it is accepted without question. Being busy, productive, and involved seems to be the foundation of a meaningful life, both inside and outside the church. I've concluded that this is a load of crap.

I summarized my thoughts on the matter a few months ago in my journal, "Do the work God gives you to do, this glorifies the Father. Don't just work thinking God will be pleased, he won't. He gave his Holy Spirit to tell you what he wants you to do. This is obeying his commands. When you know what he wants you to do, do it with all your heart, whether sharing the gospel or sweeping the porch. do it with zeal and with joy, glorifying the Father because you are doing his will. If you don't know his will, do nothing. Take time to connect with his heart and to hear what he is saying. Shut out the other voices until you hear from him and know his will."


The church of today honors activity, busyess, frenetic endeavor, like a bee hive. The more going on the better. The church despises solitude and silence, but these are the most essential spiritual disciplines if you are to grow in your faith. As Dallas Willard says "The greatest spiritual achievement is the capacity to do nothing" -Divine Conspiracy.


So to put my own spin on the time honored American maxim, "Don't just do something, sit there!"

Abide in the Vine

Our small group has been studying John 15. If you aren't familiar with it, it's the part where Jesus says he's the vine, we are the branches and if we abide in him we bear fruit. I have for a long time felt that this section of scripture was really really important. If John 3:16 is "the" foundational verse on how to become a Christian then John 15 is "the" foundational verse on what's supposed to happen after you become a Christian.

The question of how to "be" a Christian has perplexed me for a long time. I'm a "If...Then...Else" kind of guy, after all I'm a computer programmer so I have to think like this all day long. If you do A, then B will happen, else C. If you read your Bible every day, you will be happy, else you will be miserable.

What has bothered me about this passage is that "If..Then..Else" thinking doesn't seem to capture what he is talking about very well. He says "If you keep my commandments you will abide in my love", which sounds like it might fit the "If..Then..Else" paradigm, so all you need to do is figure out what those commandments are and you are off to a happy life, right? Well you read a little further and he says "My command is this, that you love one another" OK, seems a little vague, but surely I can construct a "do list" on how to love someone.

But then it dawned on me that abiding in Jesus isn't really about faithfully keeping a do list, but more about a relationship with a living person. Jesus isn't asking me to wear myself out with a bunch of religious rules, activities, and standards (It didn't work out so well for the Pharisees did it?). He's asking me to live in intimate communion with him in a love relationship and to love those around me as an outflow of my friendship with him. The imagery of a vine kind of supports this idea as well. A vine branch doesn't really "do" anything other than abide and bear fruit. Maybe Jesus had this in mind when he chose the vine analogy.

So, to understand John 15 I think you need to throw out the "If...Then...Else" paradigm and think rather in terms of a love relationship. If you consider what it takes to love a woman well, you can "do" all the right things to mechanically love a woman, but if there isn't that genuineness that comes from the heart, it's going to ultimately fall flat. So, once again, it comes down to the issue of the heart. If you don't engage with God at the heart level, you can neither walk with him, nor know him..

So the question to ask ourselves is the same that Jesus asked Peter so long ago, "Do you love me?"

Anyone who has been rock climbing for very long in Minnesota or Wisconsin is probably familiar with the name Michael Farris. he is the author of the Falcon Guide to Rock Climbing Minnesota and Wisconsin, the quintessential guide to climbing any cliffs of note in the region. In this guide he goes into meticulous detail about every available route describing degree of difficulty, how to get to your site, how to setup your ropes, where to watch for tourists throwing rocks on your head, and so forth. He's something of a legend in the rock climbing community.

Apparently Michael found the challenge and risk involved in climbing in the midwest a little too tame and has graduated to alpine climbing some of the highest and most dangerous routes in the world. I have been casually following his exploits for some time by reading his posts on his web site. http://www.mfarris.net/.

A few days ago I ran into this surprising post "On August 11 I had surgery to remove portions of seven fingers, both big toes, and portions of six smaller toes." Uh-oh, something didn't go right. As I read up on the story I learned that Michael had a near fatal experience descending Mount Everest in 2009.

Apparently Michael chose to challenge himself by climbing Mount Everest without guides, without teammates, and without Sherpa support. In other words, he was completely on his own in one of the most dangerous places in the world. His expedition went without incident until the day of the final ascent to the peak when one of his oxygen tanks wasn't functioning as well as it should have. He recognized the problem but didn't feel it warranted aborting the ascent. He was able to make the peak and begin to descend and that's when things started to go very wrong.

Blowing snow had covered up all footprints and the lines he was using for the descent and he somehow ended up taking a different route down than he had ascended. Due to lack of oxygen his thinking had begun to get unclear and his decision making began to be faulty. Shortly later ice had formed on his oxygen mask and he felt a suffocating feeling and assumed he was out of oxygen and removed his mask entirely. From this point on he remembers almost nothing.

Michael certainly would have soon perished were it not for 2 climbers that saw him as they were making an ascent. To their shock they saw him clipped into a rope, sitting in the snow and had undressed! There is a known psychological phenomenon called "paradoxical undressing" that occurs in about 50% of individuals who undergo severe hypothermia. So as surprising as this is, it isn't uncommon at all for a person who is freezing to death to disrobe. The "good Samaritan" climbers helped Mike get his clothes back on and gave him fluids and oxygen and pointed him back to camp. He made it out alive, but the frostbite is a brutal reminder of his close brush with death.

I found Michael's description of his experience fascinating. "The apparent ease with which I went from an alert state of consciousness to a state of unconsciousness is truly frightening. However, there was an intermediate stage–a stage in which I lost the urgency necessary to push on quickly on the descent. A feeling of complacency. This quote from Peter Habeler's account of the first ascent without oxygen sums it up: The feeling of this being a deadly and threatening adventure had disappeared. I was now feeling the complete opposite. I had been seized by a real sense of euphoria. I felt somehow light and relaxed, and believed that nothing could happen to me. Undoubtedly many of the men who have disappeared forever in the summit region of Everest had also fallen victim to this treacherous euphoria... At this altitude the boundaries between life and death are fluid. I wandered along this narrow ridge, and perhaps for a few seconds I had indeed gone beyond the frontier that divides life from death. By a piece of good fortune I was allowed to return. (Lonely Victory, pp.183-4)"

I see in this story a metaphor for the life of the Christian. Do you find it easy to move from a state of spiritual awareness to spiritual unconsciousness? How often are you aware that this is happening? I find nothing more easy to do than to forget that my life is a "deadly and threatening" adventure and to move through my days with blissful ignorance of the weight of my life, the threat of the enemy, and the opportunity I have daily to lead those I interact with either closer to or further from the kingdom. In fact, if I were to be brutally honest with myself, I probably spend the bulk of my days wandering around buck naked in the blizzard of life, blissfully unaware of the dangers for me and for those I love.

I'm not advocating paranoia here, I believe the Christian life is one of peace and confidence, but it's confidence built on the knowledge that (to continue the climbing metaphor) you walk the right path and are hanging on to the true life line. God's promise of guidance and protection aren't universal to those who disregard God's calling and chose to go their own way.

The other thought that occured to me as I read this is that things would have gone much better for Michael if he had a friend at his side to say, "Ya think this is a good time to start undressing?" A timely word form a trusted friend can go a long way to stearing us back to the right path.

To read the details of Michael's climb yourself see: http://www.thealtitudeexperience.com/everestreport.pdf