When my niece hit a deer with her car last month, it brought back memories of the night over 10 years ago when I did the same thing. I was driving on I-435 north of Kansas City with a coworker in the passenger's seat. It was a pleasant evening in spring, so I had the top down on my convertible, the end of the Royals' game on the radio.

The whole experience was surreal. The deer materialized from the median on the left, where a driver never expects to see any activity. In the twinkling of an eye it bounded across the interstate in front of my car. There was no time to react and no room to brake or swerve. That beautiful beast, lit by my headlights, caught the front bumper and sailed across the top of my vehicle from front to back, landing off the right side of the highway.

My airbag deployed. My heart raced. I gripped the wheel to steady the vehicle. As mysteriously as the deer had appeared on the left, an exit ramp emerged on the right. I pulled the car over halfway up and received reassurance from my passenger that he was OK. (In this situation, how do you explain that you bought a car with only one airbag?)

Then I noticed a pair of headlights approaching behind me. It was a tow truck. The driver had picked up his son from a ballgame, and he just happened to witness the accident. I was suspicious enough at this coincidence to wonder if he kept a caged deer in the back of his truck - you know, just to increase business.

The humans were unhurt. The car went into the shop. And everyone - except the deer - lived happily ever after.

You can be the best driver on the road and still hit a deer. You can be the best parent in the world and still have kids on drugs. You can be the best student in the school and still get tested on what you don't know.

And you can be the very best Christian - heck, you can be Jesus Christ himself, and still have to deal with the temptation to sin.

Each year the season of Lent opens at church with the proclamation of the story of Jesus in the desert. In Luke's account (4:1-13) Jesus enters the desert filled with the Holy Spirit. But the devil materializes like some phantom deer from the median.

The devil tempts Jesus to give up his fast, to turn stone into bread and end his hunger. The devil then tempts Jesus to receive worldly power and glory, to forsake the isolation of the desert and to receive the adulation of the masses. Jesus isn't interested in any of this. He came to the desert with a nobler purpose.

But then something else happens. The devil quotes Scripture. If Jesus won't succumb to the word of the devil, perhaps he will yield to the word of the Lord. The devil quotes Psalm 91 and assures Jesus that nothing bad will happen if he throws himself from the top of the Temple to the ground: "[God] will command his angels concerning you, to guard you." And, "With their hands they will support you, lest you dash your foot against a stone."

This has to be annoying to the Word made flesh. Jesus, whose every word is by nature biblical, has to listen to the devil stealing lines from God. Jesus overcomes all these temptations by quoting Scripture. And when the devil quotes it to him, he does not swerve.

The lectionary chooses Psalm 91 for the responsory next Sunday. Usually we expect the psalm to echo some theme from the first reading. But next week it looks ahead and foreshadows the Gospel. The temptation story makes a stronger impact because we have just sung the very words the devil will twist.

This is the bad news about temptation. Normally we are not tempted to do something we find repulsive. We are tempted to do something comfortable, something at the isolation of our computer screens, or in the company of trusted friends. We are tempted to misuse the words and actions of love. We are cruising peacefully along the highway of a good Christian life. The air is clean. The traffic is light. We know the road. We have driven it many times before. And we are not as alert as we should be to dangers lurking in the shadows.

Father Paul Turner is the pastor of St. Munchin Parish in Cameron.

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