November 1, 2022
Young Love
I love this time of the year when the deer start to go into rut (breeding season). You see some interesting sights when love is in the air. I was hunting on the opening day of gun season and got to see a spectacle.
I had been hunting for about 3 hours and had seen a small buck (Male deer). I looked across an opening about 150 yards away and saw three deer cross the opening. I knew that one of them had horns but that was all that I could tell about them. I used my grunt call which mimics the sound that a dominant buck makes and the deer came back into the opening.
As I looked through my binoculars, I could see that the buck was a small 4 point basket rack and there were two does (females) with him. The young buck was trying his best to catch the fancy of one of the females who were in heat. He would follow her almost every step that she made. She was not interested in his advances and she kept trotting off from him only to have him follow her. He reminded me of my efforts to chase girls out of my league when I was in high school.
I decided to mess with the deer. I would use the grunt call and the hot doe would perk up thinking that she was going to upgrade her suitor with a bigger, more mature buck. When the young buck would hear the grunt call he would move toward the sound with his chest puffed out. It was like he was showing the doe that he was willing to fight for her but he was really hoping that he didn’t have to if it was a larger buck. He was trying to earn her love.
As I watched this event unfold, I thought about how many times we try to earn God’s love. We try to do all the right things and say all of the right phrases to impress God and make sure that He continues to love us. Even when we are doing wrong we hope that God isn’t watching so that we don’t fall out of favor with Him.
We forget that we can’t do anything to make God stop loving us. He doesn’t love our sin and it may break fellowship with Him but He never stops loving us. Also we can’t do anything to earn His love any more than He already does. The Bible reminds us in I John 4:8 that “God IS Love”. This means that at the root of all God does is love. No matter how difficult it may appear to us, the fountain from which all God’s activity stems is this kind of self-giving love. Even His judgments, His condemnations, arrive from love.
So accept His love and let it bless you and give you a freedom to love Him totally because He first loved us and will not stop loving us.
In love with Jesus – Gary Mimbs