Those Silly Priorities
As you know, I (Andy) love this time of year. I get to do all the things that I love doing - football, tailgating, and hunting. Due to some health issues (namely a very bad back) I was unable to do any hunting last year, and with a years absence from my deer hunting resume I was really ready to get out in the woods this year - so was Duncan. Well that is exactly what we did last weekend.
We left out early Friday morning (Duncan skipped school), and when I say early I mean early, and didn't put up our rifles until late Saturday night. Needless to say, the deer population of Middle Tennessee is still safe (at least from the Gowins men). While I did want Duncan to get the chance to shoot at something (and hopefully kill something), I must admit my joy in hunting doesn't come from shooting and/or killing anything. It simply comes from being out in the woods, away from everything else, and just enjoying some downtime with my son. We've been doing this now for six years and I look forward to it each year.
There's nothing more exciting than following the tracks of an unknown deer through the woods hoping that around the next corner or tree you'll come face to face with a buck of "fish-tale-sized" proportions. I now know how my dad must have felt while he was teaching me to do all the things that I now have the pleasure of teaching my son. It is awesome! Of course, it does take a lot of patience, especially when you are hunting with an 11 year old who sees a deer behind every tree and each of them are at least an eight point buck.
The most important lesson of the weekend, however, came Saturday night on our way home. You see we still had another day that we could have hunted - Sunday (we had been drawn for a three day state quota deer hunt). On the way home that night Duncan asked me if we could just skip church the next day and hunt one more day; he begged me; he just knew that we could get a deer if we hunted one more day. Well, I must admit that this very same thought had passed through my mind more than once that afternoon, and I did have the time to take off (remember I'm a pastor and I work on Sundays). Oh what to do? Here was yet another teachable moment. "Duncan," I said, "you know as much as I would love to be out in the woods hunting tomorrow, I have a much better place to be - in the very presence of God worshiping the One who created all of this for you and me." We spend several minutes talking about what a great an awesome God we serve and how we can go hunting anytime but how we only get one chance a week to worship our great God with our church family. By the time we got back home, Duncan was excited about the prospects of worshiping God the next morning; more excited to do that than spend another cold day out in the woods chasing after a fleeting white-tailed dream.
Dads (moms) don't loose sight of the real priorities in life. "Raise up a child in the way he should go, and he will soon not depart from it" (Proverbs 22:6).
We left out early Friday morning (Duncan skipped school), and when I say early I mean early, and didn't put up our rifles until late Saturday night. Needless to say, the deer population of Middle Tennessee is still safe (at least from the Gowins men). While I did want Duncan to get the chance to shoot at something (and hopefully kill something), I must admit my joy in hunting doesn't come from shooting and/or killing anything. It simply comes from being out in the woods, away from everything else, and just enjoying some downtime with my son. We've been doing this now for six years and I look forward to it each year.
There's nothing more exciting than following the tracks of an unknown deer through the woods hoping that around the next corner or tree you'll come face to face with a buck of "fish-tale-sized" proportions. I now know how my dad must have felt while he was teaching me to do all the things that I now have the pleasure of teaching my son. It is awesome! Of course, it does take a lot of patience, especially when you are hunting with an 11 year old who sees a deer behind every tree and each of them are at least an eight point buck.
The most important lesson of the weekend, however, came Saturday night on our way home. You see we still had another day that we could have hunted - Sunday (we had been drawn for a three day state quota deer hunt). On the way home that night Duncan asked me if we could just skip church the next day and hunt one more day; he begged me; he just knew that we could get a deer if we hunted one more day. Well, I must admit that this very same thought had passed through my mind more than once that afternoon, and I did have the time to take off (remember I'm a pastor and I work on Sundays). Oh what to do? Here was yet another teachable moment. "Duncan," I said, "you know as much as I would love to be out in the woods hunting tomorrow, I have a much better place to be - in the very presence of God worshiping the One who created all of this for you and me." We spend several minutes talking about what a great an awesome God we serve and how we can go hunting anytime but how we only get one chance a week to worship our great God with our church family. By the time we got back home, Duncan was excited about the prospects of worshiping God the next morning; more excited to do that than spend another cold day out in the woods chasing after a fleeting white-tailed dream.
Dads (moms) don't loose sight of the real priorities in life. "Raise up a child in the way he should go, and he will soon not depart from it" (Proverbs 22:6).
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