An Inch Off

A coyote came in too close to the house. Too close to the horses, anyway.

That was last year.

Vic grabbed his rifle and headed outside while I stood at the front door, keeping Ginger from following him. She's a ranch dog and normally has the run of the place, but I figured this wasn't a good time for her to join the hunt.

I watched Vic raise the rifle and fire.

The coyote took off over the ridge and kept going, and honestly, I was relieved. The horses were fine. The coyote was gone. Problem solved.

Or at least, that's what it looked like.

Vic came back to the house a few minutes later. As far as either of us knew, he'd simply taken a bad shot. Maybe he'd rushed it. Maybe he'd just missed. We didn't think much more about it.

A few days later, Vic and his friend Trampas headed out to sight in their rifles before an evening of calling coyotes. Sighting in is part of the fun for them, so they took their time getting everything set up and started working through their shots together.

As they shot and checked their targets, they discovered that Vic's rifle was hitting about an inch off from where he was aiming.

An inch doesn't sound like much. But at a distance, an inch can be the difference between a clean shot and a miss. Maybe that explained what had happened with the coyote in the pasture. Maybe it didn't.

Vic wasn't upset about it. If anything, he seemed almost relieved to have an answer. Something was off with the rifle, and he hadn't known it.

Sighting in isn't a quick fix. Vic and Trampas spent a good chunk of the afternoon shooting, checking where the rounds landed, adjusting, and shooting again. Neither of them seemed to mind. If anything, that's part of what they enjoy about it, the patience of getting it right, one small correction at a time.

And sometimes, you need someone else there to help you see what you can't see on your own.

That evening, they headed up into the hills to call in coyotes. Two came in at dusk, and Vic and Trampas were far enough apart that they couldn't signal each other. They hadn't worked out ahead of time who would shoot first, so when Vic heard Trampas fire, he fired too.

They got both coyotes.

The rifle was sighted in.

Pastor Bryan talked Sunday about being one degree off course. In aviation, a tiny difference in direction can become a very big problem the farther you travel.

And as I thought about that rifle, I realized there was another part of that idea that caught me.

You don't always know you're off.

Vic wasn't ignoring a problem with his rifle. He wasn't being careless. He and Trampas were doing what they normally do before a hunt, and somewhere along the way, something had changed by just enough to matter.

I think our spiritual lives can be like that too. It might be a little less time in God's Word, a prayer life that's grown more occasional than continual, or a habit that's slowly taken up more room than it used to. None of it feels like a crisis in the moment, but if we keep going that way, the distance eventually adds up.

That's why I don't think the answer to spiritual drift is living in a constant state of worry, wondering if we're secretly getting everything wrong. The answer is learning to regularly check our aim.

Are we still pointed toward Jesus?

Are our lives actually moving in the direction we say we want to go?

And sometimes, we need someone else to help us see what we can't see on our own.

That's one of the gifts of Christian community. We need people who love us enough to tell us the truth, who will notice when something seems a little off, and who will walk with us while we make the adjustment.

Maybe that's part of what it means to keep growing in Christ. We don't make one great correction and assume we're finished. We keep listening. We keep learning. We keep surrendering. We keep allowing God to show us where we need to adjust.

Maybe that's what I like about the picture of sighting in a rifle.

You don't sight it in once and never look at it again. You check it. You make an adjustment when you need to. You shoot again. You keep working until you're where you need to be.

Following Jesus is a little like that.

Not because we're constantly failing or because God is waiting for us to get something wrong. We check our aim because we're still growing. Sometimes we need Scripture to bring something back into focus. Sometimes we need the Holy Spirit to make us aware of something we hadn't noticed.

And when we discover that we've drifted a little, we make the next faithful adjustment.

Not a panic. Not a punishment.

Just another step toward the One we're trying to follow.

From the front door that evening, everything looked fine. I didn't know the rifle was off. Vic didn't know. Neither of us could see it from where we stood.

Sometimes we can't see the drift until we stop and check.

And maybe that's okay.

Maybe that's part of growing.

One small correction at a time.

One degree closer.



This Week
Maybe the question this week isn't, "Am I doing everything right?"

Maybe it's simply, "Where am I pointed?"

Take a few minutes to sit with that. Ask God to show you what has been taking up your attention lately, where your time and energy have been going, and whether something has quietly become more important than you intended.

Then ask someone who knows you well, "Is there anything you think I'm not seeing?"

You don't have to have an answer right away. Just pay attention to what comes up, and bring it honestly to God.


Prayer

Lord,
Help us notice when we've begun to drift, and give us the humility to listen when you show us something we need to see.

Keep us from fear and self-condemnation. Teach us to trust your grace as we keep growing and following you.

Help us trust you with what we cannot yet see.
Amen.