Watch for the deer.

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Where I live there are a lot of deer, and there's this one spot next to the highway where the rocky sides are quite high, but the brush is cleared back, and people put out emergency deer feeding stations and so the creatures often congregate around there.  Practically every time you drive past that rocky patch there are does nibbling the ground.  They don't even look up, but just stand there, perfectly blending with the drabness around them.

I could never see the deer for the longest time.  Not there, necessarily, but in general.  I would stare out the window intently looking for deer or bears or any wildlife at all, but usually I didn't see anything.  The deer I saw were the ones in fields, in big groups, or the ones actually crossing the road.  The hidden, woodsy deer - well they just blended too perfectly for me.

Do you know that quote attributed to Michelangelo about the carving of the David?  It goes something along the lines of 'I simply took away everything that was not David'.  Over this winter, that has happened to my eyes in regards to the deer.

Somehow, and I don't know how exactly, I have become so accustomed to the shape, the colour, the curves, the very 'deerness' of the deer, that my mind 'takes away the trees' when I look into the brush, and suddenly I can see the deer now.  It hasn't happened with other creatures - I still peer absentmindedly around trying to find birds to identify for example, and if I stop looking for 'deerness' and instead look for deer, then again I lose my ability to see them blended into their surroundings, but still, how remarkable.

It occurred to me today that this is also a good way to picture seeing God in the world.  The Christian life is, in many ways, a method for drawing near to our creator, to know Him, to follow Him, to understand Him, as much as we frail creatures are able to.  One of the great blessings of the mature Christian faith is that you KNOW your God so well.  This is not your new passion, your new interest, which has that excitement and thrill to it; this is the well worn, but never shabby, mature faith, where you have seen Christ so long that your eyes can filter out what is not Him.

Our forest is the rest of our lives - the frustrations and anxieties and distractions - but He is there, in every forest, no matter how thick the trees.  And if we refocus our vision in that way you can only acquire by knowing Him so well, then there He is.  Look with fresh eyes into life and see Him.