A Clean Miss

RIDIN' FOR THE BRAND

“Shooter up!” the posse marshal called, and I was off and running. This is gonna be an easy stage, I
thought. Fast with large targets placed up close. Once again I had underestimated my ability to miss
what I was shooting at. The stage description called for five shots to be dumped on the bear. Now that
bear stands over five feet tall to the top of his upraised paws, about two and a half feet wide across the
belly and he was placed only ten yards away. Someone had hung a pair of men’s underwear on him and
if the shooter managed to shoot the underwear off he would be rewarded with a ten second bonus. “I’m
going for the bonus, I thought. With that bonus, I just might win this one.” Ding, ding, ding, ding, uh…
where’s the other ding? I couldn’t have missed! He’s too close, he’s too big! You must be wrong, it
couldn’t have been my fault. Perhaps it was one of those new “stealth” bullets I’m using. You know, it
passes through the target without making a sound. I was on the verge of forgetting one of the basic
principles of competition shooting, there’s never a target so large or so close that it cannot be missed.
“Be careful!” I told myself. I was shooting with a couple of the walking wounded. These were a couple of
cowboys carrying around a load of pain placed on them by some church or some well-meaning Christian
years ago and they are proud of their wounds. They seem to actually enjoy telling someone about their
scars. Early on they had cornered me and had the “magic” question. You know the kind; it seems like an
innocent enough question, but answer it wrong and you have forever lost the opportunity to witness to the
one asking the question. These were the same kind of questions the Pharisees used in their attempts to
trap Jesus.
“Do you think God will hold those people to account for what they did to me?” “I don’t know,” I responded.
“Have you asked Him?” “What did you say?” he asked. I then explained that I only knew what God has
given us in His Word since I was not a witness to his incident. I explained that if he wanted to know what
God thought about what those folks had done to him so long ago, he would have to ask God, not me.
Only God knows what God is going to do! He stopped cold and was instantly dead serious. “You think
God would tell me?” “Only if you ask,” I answered. “You know, there’s a lot of God’s grace that’s available
to us if we would just ask.” He had just looked at me and walked away checking out the ground. I
suspected that conversation had been eat’n on him because lately he wasn’t so verbal about his scars.
Now I had an opportunity to blow all the effort. He was watching to see how I would respond to my
missing that bear. I became very vocal. “I couldn’t have missed,” I proclaimed. It was those “stealth”
bullets. It your fault for not watching the target, the stealth bullet takes the ding away.” They were laughing
so hard I couldn’t make out what they were saying, but I did hear something about “git a rope!” I figured it
was time for me to call it a day.
It had been this cowboy’s practice to stand just outside the canopy where we hold church and listen. He
had refused several invitations to join us. I’m not sure what was going through his head, but as long as
he was listening to my storytelling that was a good thing.
Paul had asked, “For why is my liberty judged by another man's conscience?”
(1 Cor 10:29) Actually, this cowboy was not judging my liberty to make a fool of myself. He was just
watching the show. I could make a fool of myself if that was my desire. The real problem lay in the fact
that if I did something unseemly, like blaming someone else for my miss, I stood the chance of loosing
the opportunity to witness. God had blessed the effort this far and he was now at least acting interested.
We do that, you know. God grants us the opportunity to score a hit on a large target and all we manage to
do is blame someone else for our inadequacy. All we have to do is allow God to do the aiming for us.
After all, there’s never a target so large that we can’t manage to miss it.
About an hour later I was sitting under a tree with a cup of coffee in my hand when the cowboy walked up
and sits down. He didn’t say a word for quite a spell. “I did what you said,” he stated. “What’s that?” I
asked. “I asked Him about what those people did to me.” “Oh, yeah? What did He say?” He stood up,
hitched his belt, turned and started walking away. Then He turned and looked at me in dead
seriousness. “He told me to stop complaining.” He walked away. Thank you Lord! It’s not good for one
cowboy to see another cowboy with tears in his eyes.

© Carl H. Lenz, 2007

A CLEAN MISS