Opening day is the fifteenth and both rifles are in the cabinet and one of them has not been out since the year before last.
His father died on the ninth of November, six days before opening day, in the year of the wet fall. He was seventy four. He had been in that stand with that boy since the boy was nine years old and could not carry anything.
They had built that stand together in 1998. It is a two man stand, which matters, because most stands are not.
Last year he did not go. Nobody said anything about it. His brother-in-law asked once and then did not ask again, which was the right call.
This year the fifteenth is a Saturday and there is a whole month of people saying things.
You going out this year? It would do you good. He would want you out there. Take his rifle. Definitely do not take his rifle, take your own and leave his where it is. My uncle went the first year and said it was the best thing he did. My cousin went the first year and said it wrecked him.
Every one of those is a man who does not know what to say to another man and is saying something about hunting instead, which is what men in this county do, and it is not nothing.
And what he cannot say to any of them is that the problem is not the rifle and it is not opening day.
The problem is that it is a two man stand, and there is a very specific thing that used to happen at about half an hour before light, which was nothing at all, which was two men sitting in the cold not talking, and that is the thing that is gone, and no decision he makes about the fifteenth changes that.
If that is a cabinet anybody has been standing in front of, come and sit down at the bottom of the ladder. There is a line in Deuteronomy for exactly this and it is about what is underneath a man rather than what he is carrying.
Underneath are the everlasting arms
Here it is, and notice the direction it comes from.
The eternal God is thy refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms.Deuteronomy 33:27
Underneath.
Not out ahead of you, which is what most encouragement is. Not behind you, which is what most memory is. Underneath, which is where a floor goes, and which is the direction nobody ever thinks about until it stops being there.
That is the exact shape of what happened when your father died. Nothing in front of you changed. The place is the same, the season is the same, the stand is still standing. What went was underneath.
And this verse says what is under a man in that position, and it does not say it will be there or that it might be. It says underneath are.
You are stood on something that did not go, and you were never left standing on nothing. Deuteronomy 33:27 puts the everlasting arms underneath rather than out in front, and the Holy Spirit is the one who inspired a verse about the one direction a man does not think to look.
That verse was written for a people about to go into a country without the man who had led them for forty years. That is the whole setting of it. Moses is about to die and he is blessing the tribes and this is what he says to them on the way out.
It is a verse for a first season without somebody.
You have not been walking on nothing since the ninth of November, and you were never unsupported out there. Deuteronomy 33:27 was spoken over a people losing the man who had gone in front of them, and the Spirit of God has been underneath that stand for two seasons.
Nobody gets to tell you about the fifteenth
Now let me take the whole month of advice and set it down for you.
Nobody knows. That is the honest answer. The uncle who went the first year and said it was the best thing he did is telling the truth about himself. The cousin who went and said it wrecked him is telling the truth about himself. Both of them are true and neither of them is about you.
There is nothing in Scripture about this. Not one verse about what a man does with the first opening day, or the rifle, or the stand. It is not a spiritual matter with a right answer.
So: if you go and sit in that stand on the fifteenth, that is not brave and it does not prove anything. If you go and you get down after twenty minutes and drive home, that is not weak. If you do not go at all this year, or next year, or ever again, that is not a failure and it is not disrespect to a man who taught you to sit still.
And the rifle can stay in the cabinet for the rest of your life if that is what happens.
You are not being watched for how you handle the fifteenth, and you were never given a correct thing to do with a rifle. Nothing in the written word governs what a man does with a season after his father, and the Holy Spirit is not waiting at the bottom of that ladder to see which way you go.
The two things worth doing
Here is what I would ask, and neither is about the stand.
The first: decide one small thing about the fifteenth now, in advance, before it gets on top of a man. Not the hunting question. One small concrete thing for that day. Coffee at a particular place. Twenty minutes in the truck at the gate without getting out. Something decided while the week is still steady, so the day is not made of decisions.
The second: tell one man the date.
One. Not a speech. Something like: the fifteenth is the first one since Dad, and I do not know what I am doing about it.
Because a man in a two man stand alone is a hard thing, and a man carrying a date with nobody knowing what it is is harder, and only one of those two can be fixed this week.
You are allowed to hand one man the date, and you were never meant to carry a November by yourself. Deuteronomy 33:27 was said out loud over a whole people rather than kept private, and the Spirit is at work in a sentence said at a tailgate as much as anywhere.
So here is where this leaves you, at the bottom of a ladder, in the dark, in November.
The God who is out there is not out ahead of you telling you to get on with it. He is not standing at the gate assessing whether you go. He is the thing under the floor of the stand.
And that half hour before light, the specific thing that is gone, the two men not talking in the cold, is not a thing He is unfamiliar with. That is nearly the only setting in which He speaks in the whole of the Old Testament: outdoors, before dawn, to somebody who has been sitting still for a while.
He met Jacob at a ford in the dark. He met Moses at a bush on the far side of a wilderness. He fed Elijah under a tree and let him sleep first. He met the disciples on a beach at daybreak and cooked for them.
You are sat with in that stand by that same Christ, and you were sat with in the dark on the ninth of November. Deuteronomy 33:27 says underneath are the everlasting arms, and the Holy Spirit is the one who has been under that stand for two seasons.
And I am not going to tell you the fifteenth is any good. Comfort is His to give, in His own way and His own timing, and a season you cannot face is not a report on your faith or on the man who taught you.
But there is a second weight and it comes off tonight. You have carried an accusation that was never true, that a man who cannot get in a two man stand alone is failing his father somehow. Deuteronomy 33 stands in the written word as the permanent answer to it, and the Holy Spirit has never once graded a man on a rifle.
If the weight ever turns dangerous out there, and staying safe genuinely comes into question for you, call or text a crisis line where you live, 988 in the United States, and tell a doctor or a counselor the plain truth about the mornings. Getting another man physically near you is not weakness and it is not a failure of faith. It is the arms underneath, arriving with a face on them.
Declare this over yourself
Say these out loud in the truck, at the gate, with nobody around. The authority to speak to what has been coming at you all month was given to you in Christ, and it does not rise or fall with how much you feel out there. Scripture is the ground under every line and the Holy Spirit is the one who carries it. And whatever He does with the ache afterward is His to decide, in His own way and His own timing.
- Opening morning coming at me, you are not mine to face alone. Deuteronomy 33:27 says underneath are the everlasting arms, which is the one direction I never thought to look, and I stop bracing for the fifteenth as though the floor went with him.
- Month of advice about what a man does, get out in the name of Jesus. There is not one verse in the written word about a rifle or a first season, and the Comforter is not at the bottom of that ladder watching which way I go.
- Lord, You met a man at a ford in the dark and fed another one under a tree and let him sleep first, as 1 Kings 19:5 says. I thank You that You are underneath rather than out in front, and I am telling one man and planning one small thing.
Deuteronomy 33:27
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