Fawns Are Obedient Unto Death

My friend George Bowers, pastor of Antioch Church in Woodstock, VA, writes a weekly column for the Northern Virginia Daily. Here is a piece from a week ago, shared with his blessings and permission.

Bob

 

It’s time to make hay while the sun shines! These warm June days are filled with haymaking for farmers all around our valley as evidenced by giant green marshmallows and smaller green cubes peppered throughout the fields.

 

One of the hazards farmers face in mowing hay this time of year is the possibility of inadvertently hurting or killing young fawns. Every spring, some of these baby whitetails are unintentionally harmed as farmers harvest their forage to feed our future steaks and burgers.

 

 Why don’t these fawns scamper off when they hear the machinery approaching? Because their mothers placed them there. These newborns have no scent and make no noise, so they are virtually undetectable by coyotes and other predators shopping for dinner. When the doe plants her fawn in the tall grass, she can enjoy her own lunch with reasonable assurance her young’n is safe.

 

 This strategy wired into doe and fawn by their Creator is normally very successful in protecting the defenseless youngsters. Even when predators stroll nearby, as long as the fawns lay completely still, their spotted brown camo prevents potential disaster.

 

When the Israelites were trapped between the Red Sea and the Egyptian Army, Moses told them in Exodus 14:13 to stand still and see the salvation of the Lord! Standing still is often the most difficult strategy since most of us like to devise our own methods of escape. Instead of relying on God’s plan, we concoct our own plans that usually lead to pain.

 

 Except for the occasional Haybine or sickle bar, God’s plan for fawns works exceptionally well. Their discipline to remain completely motionless even when they have to be bursting with fear is amazing.

 

Although this effective response is likely due to instinct rather than the doe’s instruction, it can certainly instruct us. Those little fawns trust their mothers so much that they are obedient even unto death.

 

 How often we fail to trust our Heavenly Father. We commit to obeying Him and to resting in His care. We promise to submit fully to His leadership while testifying of His infinite wisdom and power. Then, at the first sign of trouble, we spring up and run like a scared rabbit thinking God has somehow failed or forgotten us.

 

Ultimately, God is much wiser than any animal or human. His ways are higher than our ways and beyond our understanding. Instead of human reason, obedience requires faith and trust, sometimes even in spite of what appears to be impending danger. Even then, God’s plan is always best.

 

Paul tells us in Philippians 2:8 that “[Jesus] humbled Himself and became obedient to death — even death on a cross!” Resisting the temptation to flee the Garden or run from Golgotha, He submitted to God’s plan, allowed Himself to be arrested, tortured, and crucified that we might be saved. Instead of jumping up and running away as death approached, He remained faithful.

 

 Later in the New Testament, we read about Stephen who was also obedient unto death as well as James the Apostle. Peter, Paul, and many others were certainly willing to die if necessary. Eventually many of those early believers resisted the urge to abandon God’s clear directives and paid for it with their lives.

 

Still today, Christians in Nigeria, North Korea, Afghanistan, Somalia, and many other countries display the same faithfulness of our valley fawns by remaining obedient even unto death. Like Jesus, Stephen, and all the others, they know that to perish obeying Christ is eternally better than surviving by disobeying Him.

 

Thankfully, most Christians in this country don’t face the threat of martyrdom. Nevertheless, we are challenged by social and cultural pressures which tempt us to bolt from Biblical standards and God’s morality. May we learn a lesson from these tender fawns and remain obedient to Jesus and His Word, even unto death. Blessings, George

O Oswald!

 

Sometime around 1976 I was driving through a small town, if it could be called a town, by the name of Intercession City, FL. I say, if it could be called a town, for I recall it as simply a few streets, and those streets with few houses and those houses with few people. One of those few people was Mildred Norbeck, more correctly, Sister Mildred Norbeck.

 

I had occasion to meet Sister Norbeck because I had occasion to drive my car to Intercession City, and once there I had occasion to drive to Sister Norbeck’s domicile, where I had occasion to park my car, get out of my car, and then knock on her door. For her part, Sister Norbeck had occasion to be home that day, not taking a nap at the time I knocked on her door, and consequently she had occasion to open the door and greet me.

 

We are told, by those who tell us they know such things, that Paul’s New Testament letters were “occasional” letters. Now to those of us with good sense, we might naturally think that they were “occasional” because Paul didn’t write that often, that is, we might think that Paul wrote letters only occasionally. This is along the line of me only occasionally sending a card or note to people I think about and tell myself, “You really should send them a card to tell them how much they mean to you.”

 

But those who tell us they know such things tell us that we are mistaken if we think Paul’s occasional letters were such because he seldom wrote, they will tell us that Paul wrote his New Testament letters because occasions arose in which he had to write; occasions which required that he encourage, scold, correct, warn, and articulate the sound teaching of our Lord Jesus Christ.

 

This being the case, those of us with good sense ought to possess enough good sense to pay attention to the occasions of our lives, for God meets us not occasionally – as in rarely or not often – but rather in the daily occasions of our lives and those of us who pay attention to our occasions throughout the day will be those who have koinonia with God throughout the day.

 

Do we not have an irony here? To pay attention to our occasions is to have continuity and fellowship with God and man – for we do not occasionally have occasions, occasions come to knock on our doors throughout the day and, if we are not taking naps and if we will answer our doors – well now, we will find Jesus coming to us.

 

Or, as in my visit to Intercession City, I knocked on the door and Jesus answered it. Sometimes we knock on doors and sometimes we answer doors, I do not understand this mystery and will look to those who know such things to explain it to me. In the meantime, let us not despise occasions for without them we would not have a good part of the New Testament, nor would we daily meet Jesus.

 

During my visit to Sister Norbeck I learned that she was a retired missionary, living among other retired missionaries, all of whom were associated with the Wesleyan Methodist Church. Intercession City had once been a thriving center of revival and Bible training and…of course…intercession. Despite its rundown appearance, Intercession City was still thriving the day of my visit, thriving in the sense that eternal springs were living in Mildred Norbeck and her neighbors, intercessions were still being offered for God’s People and mankind. Had Sister Norbeck and her friends been there in Ponce de Leon’s time perhaps he would have discovered the true Fountain of Youth.

 

Mildred was thin, a whisp of a woman, soft spoken, with a light in her eyes. She had a presence about her and within her, and to connect with her was to touch the “communion of saints” spanning ages and generations. My spirit was stirred and my heart was encouraged by Sister Norbeck on a day in which I needed uplifting, in a season in which I needed a renewed sense of God’s love.  I did not know that Jesus was going to answer my knock on her door.

 

As my visit was concluding and I was saying my goodbyes at her door, she asked, “Do you have a copy of Chambers?”

 

“No,” I replied.

 

“Just a moment,” she said. She went to a bookshelf and returned with a familiar 4” x 7” brown volume. Handing it to me she said, “Please, let me give you this.”

 

Opening the volume, just inside the cover, was her name, Mildred Norbeck.

 

That copy of My Utmost for His Highest remained with me until two years ago, when I gave it away, along with boxes of books, to a pastor who was starting a library in his church. I still have a copy of “Chambers,” given to me by a friend with an inscription to me in it, dated June 2, 1994.

 

When I was 16 years old George Will, an older student at Bible College, gave me my first copy of Chambers. Mildred Norbeck gave me my second copy. Buddy Childress gave me my third copy. George, Mildred, and Buddy are saints that have touched me and others – each influencing my life. While Mildred’s influence would seem to have been brief, the fact that I am writing about her almost 50 years since my occasional visit indicates otherwise – for I have never forgotten her nor Intercession City, to have touched Mildred was to touch the transcendent in Jesus Christ.

 

I titled this piece, “O Oswald!” because I intended to write about Oswald Chambers and the disconnect between Chambers and much of what passes for Christianity today, instead I have written about Mildred Norbeck. But perhaps I have written about Chambers, for Chambers came to me through first George Will, and then Mildred Norbeck, and later still through Buddy Childress – and through Chambers came the Christ of the Cross and the Cross of Christ. Chambers has been a companion of mine since I first opened My Utmost for His Highest in 1966, and meeting Sister Norbeck was to meet not only another friend of Oswald’s, but more importantly, it was to meet another friend of Jesus Christ’s.

 

We just never know what an occasion will hold for us…we just never know.

 

What occasions might be in your future today?