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This
volume containing two years of
Restoration
Review
launches
me the fourth decade of my editorial efforts, being the thirty-first
and thirty-second years of my tenure as an editor. It somehow seems
appropriate that these years be symbolized by the Doe of the Dawn,
or the lonely deer who has lost its way during the night only to
find hope of rejoining his friends with the coming of dawn.
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Being
an editor, especially a
libertarian
editor,
is not unlike the chastened doe standing on a craggy summit, half
lost and half found, looking hopefully to the break of light beyond
the vast stretches of the eastern hills. The commingling of anxiety
and hope seems apropos, just as a realistic ,-jew of our troubled
world is defensible when it is balanced by radiant optimism. It is
to the credit of the wandering deer that however dark the night
became he did not forget that after awhile the dawn breaks for those
who wait.
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And
waiting is all too rare a virtue, just as "Blessed are those
who wait upon the Lord" is a neglected beatitude. Artist Tom
Farr, a member with me of the Church of Christ of Denton, has
captured in his drawing the blessedness of waiting. Even if the doe
cries out "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me" (Ps.
22:1), and even if in the dark night he finds no rest (verse 2),
still he waits for the break of day. And at last she can sing
I
will praise thee!
and
invite all others who reverence God to do so (vss. 22-23). It is
noteworthy that those who might be led to wonder if God has forsaken
them, including the Christ himself, are often the ones who go on to
praise Him most gloriously. It is possible that Jesus in his agony
on the Cross not only quoted the first verse of this psalm of the
Doe of the Dawn, but the whole of it.
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Study
David's psalm and Tom's drawing with care, for they point up the
grace of waiting on God. Here we have the hardest and most rewarding
lessons of life to learn: to attune our impulsiveness to God's time;
to accept His methods, which seem slow to us, rather than our own;
to keep pace with the patience of God and to reject the arrogance of
man's haste.
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Isaiah
(30: 18) joins the psalmist in calling upon the people to wait upon
the Lord's deliverance rather than trust in the strength of Egypt,
which the prophet exposed as "worthless and empty." He
calls for quietness and trust, and he warns against relying upon a
plan that is not God's.
Blessed
are those who wait ...
We can imagine that if there had been a press in Isaiah's time such
a policy would have been ridiculed as madness.
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The
Doe of the Dawn relied upon Isaiah's kind of trust. She saw God as
holy and enthroned on the praises of His people (Psa. 22:3), as well
as the God in whom her people trusted. God takes LIS from our
mother's womb (vs. 9) and we stand in awe of Him (vs. 23). Finally
she affirms with the great prophets that "God rules over the
nations" (vs. 28). We therefore
do not wait for His purposes in vain.
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Tom's
drawing and the spirit of the psalms suggest still another imagery
as we think of all this in terms of a Christian world view: "As
the hart pants after the water brooks, so pants my soul after thee,
0 God" (Ps. 42: 1). Our view of things from first to last is a
matter of attitude. It is like the man who was told that he must
accept the fact that suffering colors life, who responded that while
that was true he could choose the color. If in our earthly sojourn
our mission is to find God and to build His kingdom on earth,
however slowly, then our world view will have the right hue. To
hunger
for
God like the hart longs for water, that is the issue of life.
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And
that is the essence of my world view. Like the Doe of the Dawn I
believe that God is in control and like Luther I believe that we are
on the winning side. I accept the night of life and like the Lord
himself I sometimes cry out
My
God, why
…
And like the doe I go on praising Him, believing that it will all
come out right. The dawn will break and I will find my way.
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They
say The Doe of the Dawn was sung by an ancient tune that no one now
knows. Was it a dirge or an idyll, a song of sorrow or one of mirth?
We choose the tune we will; we select the color that life takes. And
yet there is wisdom and balance in Shakespeare's insistence that
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There's
a divinity that shapes our ends,
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Rough-hew
them how we will.