Here goes!
Psalm 42 (The Message)
A psalm of the sons of Korah
1-3 A
white-tailed deer drinks from the creek; I want to drink God,
deep draughts of God. I'm
thirsty for God-alive. I wonder, "Will I ever make it—
arrive and drink in God's presence?"
I'm on a diet of tears—
tears for breakfast, tears for supper.
All day long people knock
at my door, Pestering,
"Where is this God of yours?" 4 These
are the things I go over and over, emptying
out the pockets of my life. I was always at the head of the
worshiping crowd, right out in front,
Leading them all, eager to
arrive and worship, Shouting praises, singing thanksgiving—
celebrating, all of us, God's feast! 5
Why are you down in the dumps, dear soul?
Why are you crying the blues?
Fix my eyes on God— soon
I'll be praising again. He puts a smile on my face.
He's my God. 6-8 When my soul is in
the dumps, I rehearse everything I know of
you, From Jordan depths to Hermon heights,
including Mount Mizar.
Chaos calls to chaos, to
the tune of whitewater rapids. Your breaking surf, your
thundering breakers crash and crush me.
Then God promises to love me all day,
sing songs all through the night!
My life is God's prayer. 9-10
Sometimes I ask God, my rock-solid God, "Why
did you let me down? Why am I walking around in tears,
harassed by enemies?"
They're out for the kill, these
tormentors with their obscenities,
Taunting day after day,
"Where is this God of yours?" 11 Why
are you down in the dumps, dear soul? Why
are you crying the blues? Fix my eyes on God—
soon I'll be praising again.
He puts a smile on my face.
He's my God.
Oh wow. This is niiiiiiiiice. I do like this one (obviously).
I have pictures of deer that were found in our yard. It was toward the end of the day and I managed to get a pretty good shot of the three deer around the feeder at the end of our garden. I mostly see them at night so with my pitiful camera, it is hard to get a good, clear shot of them normally.
Now, I think to myself: I have a picture of deer. Deer remind me of what God has given us in the way of nature’s beauty and food for my family. Yes, my husband and sons love to deer hunt but never just for the sport of it. I’m not arguing that point with anyone at the moment though. The point I was getting to is that deer are, like I said, God’s gift in nature. They go through the day depending only on God.
I scanned over my cheat sheet book (NIV Compact Concordance, John R. Kohlenberger III) to find references to deer in the Bible. The first I came to was in Proverbs. Basically it compared a doe to a woman (somewhat). I felt it wasn’t “G-rated” enough to put on a church blog. (I write for both my own blog on Blogger and on the Mt Mitchell UMC blog.) Depending on the translation, it had words in it about promiscuous women that I felt weren’t quite right in case anyone under the age of 13 was reading it.
That leads me to the second reference of deer in the Bible. It is this one, Psalm 41:1 specifically. It only mentions deer that one time but it goes into what I thought was a wonderful thing to remember.
Are we full of God? If we were completely full, would we still have doubts? If we do not follow in God’s steps, follow his Word, we are open to these doubts. It gives us holes in which our faith is able to leak out and makes us open to people who are not Christian questioning our faith which leads us to questioning our own faith. (Wow, that was a mouthful!)
As I go over my own faith, I check for holes in it. I worry that what other people say are part of what is putting holes in me. What I should have been doing, rather than checking for holes, was looking to God for direction. Too much introspection sometimes causes me to focus on all that is wrong with me. Looking into my soul is not a bad thing as long as I look to God to fix what is wrong. He has all the answers and here I am, whine, whine, whine. I’m bad about checking myself and heading off to a pity party. “Oh this is awful! This is terrible! If I could have done this or that, I could have fixed it. Poor pitiful me.”
It is a shame that all I needed to do is look to God. His smile and love would have fixed all my faults in good time. Sometimes, when you are not aware of it, other people see how you react to a situation. You know the old adage of “misery loves company”. If I’m in front of them, praising God for all his wonders, they may do the same. If I’m leading the charge in my own pity party, other people may do the same. If I show weakness in my faith in God, there are always those who are digging around to make the holes bigger.
This Psalm reminds me to look to God for the fix. He has made all of this wonderful stuff around me so why should I spend my time whining? Maybe I should be like the deer I see in my garden. They seem to appreciate God’s works. They eat God’s food and live in God’s woods. They don’t spend their time worrying over how bad their world is. They just go with the flow, the flow that God has given them. When I do find holes, which I will invariably do, I need to turn my face to God and ask Him for help. He is the rock on which I lean. I want to be like Him and be a rock myself. I want to be solid in my faith. I want to feed from God’s nature and enjoy what He has made. He makes me say, “Pity parties are for other people!”. I can only hope that one day, no one ever has a pity party. Everyone will be facing God, asking for His grace.
