It is finished...
No, this isn't a Christmas message though the focus on Christ and His finished work upon the Cross is very appropriate in late December. No, this message is about the buck.

As you may know from my earlier post, I killed my first buck in mid-November. It was a great thrill and so many people were so supportive of me in this process. I cannot tell you how touched I was by their support. The night I killed him I brought him home to show Shannon and the girls. Word spread that I had killed a big buck and friends started showing up to see the deer. We had a small celebration in my garage with close friends. Kind of crazy but very special.

As the days went on, I received a number of phone calls and emails of folks offering their congratulations. There is a neat community of hunters in Columbus and we rally around to celebrate each other's success. My hunting mentor - Ken Evans - was especially encouraging and supportive. Thank you Ken.

Blake Voltz - my neighbor and hunting club member - gave me the name of a taxidermist, Harrell Favors. I called Harrell and he couldn't have been nicer. He wanted to hear the whole story of how I killed the buck. I gave him the complete history, blow by blow, and he was truly, genuinely excited for me. He said, "Don't you worry, I'll go get the deer and I'll take really good care of him and do it just right."

At one point a few weeks ago, I sent Harrell an email from my blog of the story about the deer. His wife Jan wrote me back an incredibly nice and supportive email. She too is a hunter and completely understands the "sanctuary experience" of hunting.

She wrote this...A few years ago, at a family reunion, a male relative asked me, "Why do you hunt?" And for a moment, (just a moment) I was at a loss for words.....but when I haltingly answered, "There's no place I'd rather be a daybreak than in the woods...when the sun comes up, and rays of light filter through the trees, and the woods start to come alive with small animals scurrying about, and the birds greeting the new day and each other.....and as I look around, I see God in everything. I can almost hear his voice audibly as I talk to him." Before I could go any further, he smiled and said, "Same reason I hunt."

So time goes on and I've put the deer out of my mind. I trust Harrell and know he'll get it to me just as soon as he can.

Well, Santa came yesterday. My sweet wife became an elf and went to work to get me that deer on Christmas morning. She contacted Blake and told him what she wanted to accomplish. He - being the hunter he is - immediately grabbed it and said, "Let me take care of it, I'll call Harrell and arrange for it." Harrell, knowing the special circumstances immediately agreed to speed up the mounting. Something magical was about to happen in my life.

Shannon was so careful to conceal her elfish activities. Covert text messages, secret phone calls, etc. She had it all arranged. Blake picked up the deer last week and stored it at his house. On Christmas Eve, when we were at church, Blake was going to put the deer in the back of Shannon's car in the garage. When we were leaving to go to church, Shannon said, "Let's take your truck, my car is on empty." She feared I'd be suspicious - I wasn't. I'm proud to drive my truck anywhere - mud an all - especially to church! So we leave for church. Blake comes by and finds that her car doors are locked. He texts her and when we are riding home she is over there texting. Now I am getting suspicious. But she passes this off as some planning she is doing for a friend of hers. She goes in the house, unlocks the car and calls Blake. He is at his folks house eating Christmas dinner and gladly runs back to our house to try it again. I'm touched by his willingness to help.

So now it is Christmas morning and Shannon has kept this secret for a month conspiring with my neighbor and my taxidermist. About 10am, she says, "Richard I left something for the girls in the back of my car...go get it..."



Wow! You can imagine (or maybe see in my picture) just how special this was. I am touched beyond words by my wife's love for me and the effort she placed into making this happen. I am touched by Harrell & Jan Favors - folks I've never met but that I know will become good friends of ours. I am touched by Blake Voltz - for his love of hunting and his genuine excitement for his next door neighbor's good fortune.

We built a house a few years ago and I have a small study that is "my" space. A man's room. It is wood paneled with a pheasant on the wall, a print of a red-tail hawk (my blog is HawkSoars) and a Bucky Bowles print of quails lifting through south Georgia pines. My coffee table is a pair of benches pushed together that we used to have at our lake cabin (when we had it). These were made out of thick Mississippi heart pine from a 100+ year old barn from the farm of a friend. Over the mantle hung Robert E. Lee from my KA days at Mercer. Lee has hung in my house ever since I left college but I knew when I built this room that one day, I'd hang a big buck there. I even told Shannon that and she said, "You don't hunt Honey..." Well, the room is now finished. It is finished and I am blessed beyond words.



Soar!

More thwarting
OK so I told you there would be more on the thwarting thing. Why then would I wake up at 4am this morning and not be able to go back to sleep? Hmmmm....I wonder. Try as I may, my mind raced and I kept saying "What is it Lord? What are you trying to tell me?" Very clearly, I felt the answer was "Get up and get in Me." So, here I am.

My desire for sleep is thwarted! God wants time alone with me and sometimes posting on this blog is the best way I can articulate my thoughts to God. So I will ramble a bit again this morning...bear with me.

The "big" story and the "small" story - John Eldredge does such a good job of laying out that our lives are part of a much bigger story. Much goes on around us and we are characters in the great play of life. I struggle with this issue with our children. Very often we will explain to them that life isn't about them. As teenage girls, they have a hard time grasping that at times - they are conditioned by TV, friends and this world that life very much is all about them. Our world conditions all of us to this point. Look at ads in any magazine or on any TV channel...its all about you. "You too can possess the American dream..."

Our sin nature drives us to self-centeredness. Our children struggle with that - all children do. From very early on in their lives we teach them it is all about them. And as teenagers, we try to undo that by telling them "Life isn't about you!" (is it any wonder we all wind up in therapy?) As young babies and toddlers, we fawn all over them desiring to meet their every need and every desire. That plays right into the sin nature they are born with. That is perpetuated through their teenage years and on into college - it is all about pursuing their dreams and goals and ambitions.

As adults, we struggle with it. As Christians, we struggle with it. No matter how hard we try, we seem to always make the story circle back to ourselves. I do it all the time. I give a talk at church and immediately I want to ask my wife or someone else, "How did I do?" I prepare a presentation for work and labor to make it as good as I possibly can so that it will set me apart. I argue points in a conversation with family or friends or business associates and deep down, it is about me trying to win my points. Do you see?

I have had a glimmer of liberation in this just this week. I had to give a talk this week for business. I labored hard in preparing my remarks and Power Point and was ready to go. It was going to be another "See how good I can make Richard look in front of other people" talk. And then, I changed course. I really think God laid all these teachings on thwarting to culminate around this talk this week. He hit me with the same message 3-4 times in the past three weeks as a lead into this talk. I see that now.

I was asked to make a presentation and for the first time I can remember, I shifted my focus from being on me to being on the audience. I believe strongly and passionately about what it is I wanted to say. I laid out my points like a lawyer ready to argue his case. But what God nudged me toward was putting myself into the lives of the recipient. They asked me for my opinion and I had it to give but God wanted me to make this talk about the folks in the audience - not me.

I had something to share. It was well prepared, well thought out but my acclaim ended right there. I did what I was asked to do - "Come and tell us what you think". I put myself in mode of God saying, "Go tell them what you think - they need it, they've asked for it...fill their need".

It was incredibly freeing and liberating to just give the talk, lay out what it was I felt led to say and then leave the room. I didn't need to stand around and subtly encourage the "Great talk" comments. Frankly and very truthfully, I didn't want them. This talk simply wasn't about me. It was about them. Their goals, their dreams, their desires. When I shifted my focus from me and my small story, I immediately entered into the big story.

Again, from the last post, there is nothing wrong with dreams, goals or desires but when they play themselves out in "our" story and not as a part of the "big' story, we digress from God and He will thwart us to pull us back toward Him. The small story is our story. We can live our whole life in that small story - providing for our family, building our business, paying off our mortgage, constructing our retirement and accomplishing our life goals. We can do all of that and lead a pretty good life but if we do all that ignoring the big story, we are missing out on the "more".

God promises so much more. "The glory of God is man fully alive". Fully alive means living in the big story - His story.

Its all about you Lord. Its all about you.

Soar!

Thwarting
I have a series of posts to come on the topics of thwarting and idols. It seems that I can't escape these themes over the past 3-4 weeks.

Why would God thwart us? We have our desires and our dreams - why does it seem that these are nearly impossible to reach? So often, our dreams become our idols. We long for the perfect house, the perfect job, the chance to see the West, a completely healed family, investments that multiply, the peaceful life, etc. Many of these are worthy desires but if misplaced, they can become idols. Sometimes we long for family - family that fulfills our needs, understands us, moves towards us. Sometimes we long to "be somebody" - to be noticed, desired, viewed with respect or even honor. Again, these are worthy aspirations and again, if misplaced, can become idols.

We all have that "ache" in us for something. Oftentimes, it sets us out on a quest, a mission to fulfill that desire and satisfy that ache. They become our way of life.

Here is where the problems appear. When we have that ache, that longing as our priority in life...it is very likely that God is nowhere around. If our focus is on that desire - it cannot be on God. The quest itself can pull us away from God as can actually accomplishing our desire. If we won the lottery, we'd have it "made". Life would be complete. So how does God feel about that? See my point is that if "my" goals are fulfilled, "my" dreams realized -- where would I have room for God? It would be about "me", not "Him".

God is a jealous lover. The things we chase after and dream of and pursue are very often far removed from God. And so, in that, He thwarts. If we find our "salvation" in the lottery - we don't need God.

Man is an adulterer. We seek others. We pursue our wants and our desires and turn our back on the One who can fulfill all our needs. God operates in the "big" story. He sees the entire picture. Whereas I tend to focus on the "small" story...me. My goals, my dreams, my desires, my longing for acclaim, my vision, etc. My story is all about me.

And so...God thwarts. He knocks me off my horse as a gentle (and sometimes not so gentle) reminder that the things I rabidly pursue are serving to pull me farther and farther away from Him. God is a jealous lover. He wants all of us. Our idols take up a lot of the shelf space in our life - space designed God the One who loves us completely.

Much, much more to come on this. This post was a bit fractured - I'm gathering many thoughts. Stay patient with me as I work through these thoughts.

Soar!