About this time of year, for a week every autumn, my eldest son Davin together with his wife Ife, our little granddaughter Kira and the grandpups Alby and Vega come up from the South Thompson area of B.C. to visit us in the Cariboo. For Linda and me it’s a wonderful time of year filled with wonderful people (not to mention dogs) and usually ends with a whole family project of cutting and wrapping deer meat. And so, last autumn found Davin and me leaving home before daylight to travel up to the headwaters of Knife Creek on day three of our annual father-son deer hunt.
Davin dropped me off about three kilometres from the place where he was going to hunt. The plan was for me to slowly make my way on foot through the thick bush towards where he was going to be hunting. We planned to meet up for lunch. I had been moving very slowly in my prearranged direction when I came across an old cut line, quite wide and covered with sumptuous grass and forbs. I decided to sit at its edge and use the binoculars to watch for any mule deer that might come out to feed. Perhaps a big buck would come out and we could fill the winter larder for both families.
I didn’t have to wait long. Four female deer arrived about 200 metres upwind from me and began to feed on the lush grass. Intrigued, I was glued to my binoculars watching these beautiful animals when one of the does caught site of me. She couldn’t catch my scent as the wind was blowing from her to me, but gradually she began to lead the other three deer right towards me to investigate what this strange thing was pretending to be a stump on the edge of the cut line. Eventually she and her crew came up to within a couple of metres of me, poking their heads out to smell and staring at my sitting form trying to figure me out. And then they crossed the favourable wind threshold and I was busted. Suddenly catching my scent, the four deer literally sprang into the air in unison, swapped ends while they were in mid air and came down to jump away like four kangaroos.
I stood up and chuckled to myself. No wonder my favourite 18th-century explorer David Thompson called mule deer “jumping deer.” All of a sudden, a giant clatter and racket together with a large tree being pushed over shocked me. The hellish sound came from four metres away in the bush, downwind from where I had been sitting all the time. It was exactly on my back trail; like whatever made it had been following me right up until I decided to pause and watch the deer, when it had obviously paused to watch me.
“Huh, must have been a moose,” I muttered to myself. I packed up my stuff and nonchalantly headed out again across the cutline to continue through the bush.
That’s when I ran headlong into the biggest bear biffy I had ever seen. There must have been a dozen large mounds of fresh berry-bulging bear bowel movements all in a circle like some bear convention had been taking place on the edge of the cutline for a week. But I knew that wasn’t it. I had been sitting near the site of a black bear’s den and I had almost been selected as the bedtime snack before it turned in for the winter. I left the area considerably faster than I had arrived and with a whole lot more glancing over my shoulder. The hunter had become the hunted.
But this is not unusual for me in my bushwhacking. I am often walking near the edge of apparent danger, be it from predators, getting lost, getting stranded and a host of other risks. I just don’t think about it much. It just goes with bush territory and if am going to be in the bush I have to accept the risks.
A couple of hours later I came to where Davin had been hunting and he had an amazing four-point mule deer buck already harvested and cleaned. We loaded it into the pickup and headed home. Now the work would begin with the skinning, boning, cutting and wrapping.
As I drove I thought. I knew I had taken a risk hunting where I had and by hunting alone. And I knew the risk I had taken had almost paid off—for the bear that is. The question on my mind was how does a person of faith relate to taking risks? What does the Bible say about it? I stored up these questions in my mind to sort through later.
It turns out the Bible has a lot to say about risk taking in living the life of faith. Generally, Jesus urges prudence with regards to risk taking, but he also says much to encourage it. He encourages taking the risk to invest ourselves fully in the work of the Kingdom. He tells the parable of the talents, saying those who risk investing everything for the Kingdom of God are worth more to God than those who play it safe and risk nothing. He ends with saying that to those who risk much, more will be given—to risk I expect—and he closes with a stern warning for those who will not take risks for the Kingdom at all (Matthew 25:14-30).
The writer of Ecclesiastes has much to say about everything, especially risk taking. Foolish risk taking for the faithful is generally discouraged while prudent risk taking is required. Chapter 11 is my favourite example. Here in the first six verses the example of a merchant and a farmer are given. Both must live taking risks for neither knows how the things they can’t control will affect their endeavours. “Cast your bread upon the waters” illustrates that the merchant must take the risk of shipwreck and pirates but still must send out his grain aboard his ships to trade or he will never survive. But he must be wise and send out seven or eight ships instead of a single one, says the teacher. In other words, don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Likewise, the farmer, who must take the risk of planting does so not knowing the weather. The farmer must take the risk and plant but like the merchant he plants more than one crop not knowing if one or the other or both will succeed. Both must take risks to succeed and both have to be faithful in terms of limiting the risk. The point in all this, I think, is that in the Kingdom, faith is a life of taking risks by trusting God, and faithfulness is a life of being prudent or careful and wise in serving God.
Hmmm—faith and faithfulness; risk taking and prudence—dare I call it the ying and the yang of the Christian life? Obviously balance is the key, which raises the question: how balanced am I? If I am bone honest, I am usually way over-invested in the yang side of the equation—way overcautious I think, except in my bushwhacking. Would that I could live my faith life for God a little more like I bushwhack and hunt for game.
