A friend of mine told me her elderly mother-in-law liked to read signs as she traveled down streets and roads. Not just a few signs. Every single one.
“Grace Street … For Sale By Owner … Speed Limit 30 … Let ’em Work, Let ’em Live … Two Sausage Biscuits for a Dollar ….”
Any trip through town brought on a verbal barrage that was almost more than one could bear, my friend said.
I sometimes wonder if I might be coming down with that same quirky affliction.
The other day, I found myself reading a sign out loud to my husband for absolutely no reason. The sign was in front of a farm supply store and it was advertising some kind of deer food. Just below the name of the food, the sign said, “Hi Energy.” I assumed the two lines went together, which flipped a switch in my brain and sent me into a question-asking frenzy.
“Do people actually feed deer?”
“Was that in some ‘Intro to Country Life’ class we obviously missed?”
“If we’re supposed to feed deer, why would we want to feed them ‘high-energy’ food? Do they need more energy to jump over garden fences or run into cars?”
When I finally paused for a moment, Joe said, “I don’t think the ‘high energy’ part of that sign was referring to the deer food.”
Oh. Well, I thought it was. But regardless, my brain train was already way down the tracks, thinking of the many reasons it would be nuts to get deer jazzed up on high-energy food. And I’d even already started gleaning a spiritual lesson from the whole thing.
It seems to me that the deer have the advantage in the annual war we call “deer season” around here. It appears to be pretty hard to shoot those jumpy critters. That being the case, surely deer hunters would like their prey to be as slow as possible … just like the devil wants his prey—us—to be slow: so we will be easy pickings.
“Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour,” the Apostle Peter warns (1 Peter 5:8).
Who do the lions go after on all those TV nature shows? Yep, the slow wildebeests, that’s who.
I think that’s also true for those of us in the “herd” of Christ-followers. It’s the “slow” among us who get picked off.
So what does it mean to be a “slow” Christian?
It’s interesting that Jesus actually called two of His disciples “slow of heart” as He walked with them on the road to Emmaus after His resurrection. (Luke 24:25) Despondent over the crucifixion of Christ, these two guys didn’t realize the man walking and talking with them was actually the risen Lord.
“O foolish men and slow of heart to believe in all that the prophets have spoken!” Jesus said to them.
Jesus had told His disciples He would be crucified and resurrected, but when it actually happened, some didn’t believe it and their unbelief—their “slowness of heart”—led them into a pit of confusion, fear and despair.
We’ll end up there, too, if we don’t believe what God has told us in His Word, the Bible.
Unbelief makes us “slow of heart,” and the slow are easy pickings for Satan, the one Jesus says is out to “kill, steal and destroy” our lives (John 10:10).
Faith is our defense against that evil predator, and “faith comes from hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ” (Romans 10:17).
God has given us the ultimate “high-energy food”—His Word. If we read it, believe it, and live it, we won’t end up as a trophy hanging on Satan’s wall.