<TITLE>21. Par 237-246</TITLE>L-237 I can just see her big ears, them big brown eyes. She walked right out in that open. Now, that's strange for a deer to do that, especially that time of day, and right out when hunting season is in, to walk out like that. But she walked right out into that opening, a little clearing, a little meadow. That's very unusual for her to do that. But why did she do it? She was a mother. She was actually born a mother. And that call of her baby, she didn't think about danger. She was thinking about her baby.

L-238 And when I seen her turn broadsided; Burt, I heard him let the bolt down on that.30-06, and he was a dead shot. I seen him raise around and put the cross hair of that scope right across her loyal heart.

L-239 I thought, "Burt, how can you do it? How can you do it? Surely you won't do it." I thought, "That mother, walking out there to take up for her baby, and then you would blow that loyal heart out of her. How can you do it, Burt?" And I stood there.
I see him quieten himself down, leveling down like that.

L-240   I thought, "Oh, my! I--I can't watch it." I thought, "That mother, she can't help it." She's not acting smart. She's not putting on a show. She's a mother, in her. Her--her--her part, in her, she's a mother. And that was a baby calling, in trouble, and she's hunting for it.

L-241 And when the bolt fell, the deer turned and looked to the hunter, 'cause he had raised up. That still didn't excite her. She was ready to die. She...
Oh, if people could just be like that!

L-242 I turned my head. I couldn't watch him shoot her. I turned my head. And I started praying, silently, 'cause I knowed he'd bawl me out if I tried to run her away. I--I turned my head like that, and I said, "Father God, help him. Help him. Don't--don't let him kill that mother, trying to hunt for her baby, and it crying like that. Don't--don't let him kill her." And I was turning, like this, and I noticed.

L-243   I was listening, to hear the gun go off, any minute, but the gun never went off. I waited and I waited. And when I turned around, to see, he was holding like this. I seen the gun going like this.

L-244 He turned around, looked up to me, and out of them cruel-looking lizard eyes, the tears was dropping off his cheeks. He throwed the gun on the ground. He grabbed me around the trouser leg. He said, "Billy, lead me to that Jesus that you know." Right there on that snow bank, I led that cruel hunter to Jesus. He's a deacon in a Baptist church up there now.

L-245 Why? What was it? It wasn't a preaching. It--it--it wasn't the songs that he heard. But he seen something that wasn't a put-on, something that wasn't a front. He seen something that was genuine. "If they hold their peace, the rocks will cry out." He saw that there was something somewhere that could send a person in the face of death, a love that could send that mother deer in the face of death, and yet not fear to die, because the love of her fawn calling. He wanted to know if there was a--a God that could give him that kind of love, and he found it that day.

L-246   Friends, a greater than Solomon is here. Jesus said one time... It was written in the Bible, rather, "Can a mother forget her suckling babe?" Said, "She might do that, but I can't forget you. Your names are engraved on the palms of My hands." And they are, by nail prints in His hands.


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