The Lord Shall Preserve You

Our encounters with bears are apparently over for this year with the advent of hunting season. They have wisely decided that a lower profile might be the way to go and they have gone further into the wilds. We had a bear visitor two summers ago that showed very little of such wisdom or discretion.

We were awakened at dawn by a very loud noise from the vicinity of our garage. I threw on some clothes, but sadly neglected to bother putting on my glasses. Indeed the back door to the garage was damaged. The screen had been ripped off and the aluminium trim was bent. In those days I was silly enough to store garbage in the garage. I switched on the light and sure enough one of the four bags of garbage was gone. I concluded the obvious. A bear had entered and left with a bag of garbage. Thinking the incident to be over, I started back to the door on the lake side of the house. Just as I entered, I heard a second assault on the garage door. This time I decided that being without my glasses was not a good idea. Proper vision restored, I went out just in time to see a large black bear slamming his paw into the door latch until it miraculously opened. He then entered the garage and emerged, after reopening the door from the inside with a facility that shocked me, with the second bag of garbage. Not being in an argumentative mood, I backed up into the house. As I was backing up, I realized to my horror that the first bag of garbage was not twenty feet to my right in the bush. Without my glasses I had simply walked right by my visitor as I left the garage during my initial investigation!

I went to the family room window in order to observe my guest. He was back at the garage door. I opened the window and yelled at him to cease and desist. He did not even turn around to acknowledge me. It was then that I realized he was favouring his left paw because of a rather obvious gun shot wound. Hunger and desperation were making this bear much braver than nature would normally dictate. The third bag of garbage was taken in a different direction and deposited in the bush. Trying to avoid further damage to the back door of the garage, I pushed the inside button to open the large folding garage door so that he could enter and remove the fourth bag without difficulty. He did and proceeded to hang around our house for the day! He never approached us and lumbered away when we moved closer, but he had found a food source and was not about to give it up. Our neighbour is retired from the Ministry of Natural Resources and called the proper authorities who agreed that this dangerous situation merited a bear trap. Our large black friend took the bait and was in the mobile cage by 9:00 P.M. that night. He was hauled off to a new home, I assume, in the morning.

The thought of walking blindly within twenty feet of that bear has given me some pause from time to time. He must of really wondered how stupid is this guy? The other day, while browsing through the Psalms, I was taken with the comforting wording of Psalm 121 which really applies to this experience.

1 ¶ A Song of Ascents. I will lift up my eyes to the hills––From whence comes my help?
2 My help comes from the LORD, Who made heaven and earth.
3 He will not allow your foot to be moved; He who keeps you will not slumber.
4 Behold, He who keeps Israel Shall neither slumber nor sleep.
5 The LORD is your keeper; The LORD is your shade at your right hand.
6 The sun shall not strike you by day, Nor the moon by night.
7 The LORD shall preserve you from all evil; He shall preserve your soul.
8 The LORD shall preserve your going out and your coming in From this time forth, and even forevermore.

The Lord did indeed preserve my going out and my coming in without my glasses. I must admit that my vision without my bifocals is rather poor. The bear was probably so taken with his bag of treasures that he simply was not interested in the silly old guy walking by so closely. The Lord does indeed look after us despite our sometimes very poor decisions. I have since realized that the Lord was also looking after the needs of the bear on that morning. We are both God’s creation and He made it all work for the better.

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