I have a feeling that some of Bella and Chloe’s playtime might have been a little unsettling to Bella’s youngest master.  Young wild animals learn survival skills through play—how to hunt and how to fight.  Even domesticated animals learn some of these things.  Puppies always engage in rough and tumble play, including baby nips and growls.  Chloe and Bella did the same, and being larger and older, it looked much fiercer.
 
             Teeth bared, growls ferocious, their muzzles tilted back and forth as if trying to find the best place to lock onto one another.  Larger Bella ran at Chloe and broadsided her, sending her rolling, then pounced on top.  In seconds, more experienced Chloe had her legs wrapped around Bella and flipped her over, like a wrestler reversing a pin.  Sometimes they ran headlong into one another like charging bulls and as they met, the saliva flew in all directions.  I learned to stand way back.

              How did I know this wasn’t real, that it was simply an older dog teaching a younger through play?  Because they never drew blood.  If you watched their mouths, neither ever closed tightly on the other dog’s body anywhere.  And when they finished, they stood panting for a few moments, energy spent, both tongues dangling toward the ground, looking at one another.  Often they would touch noses, then walk shoulder to shoulder back to the shade, Chloe under the truck and Bella under a tree—lesson for the day over.

              I remember a time when brethren could discuss things, even differing views on a passage, and each come away having learned something.  They could trust one another, not only to have each other’s best interest at heart, but also to listen and consider fairly, and never to become angry.  Even if voices rose, no blood was drawn, spiritually speaking, respect continued, and both left with more knowledge and insight.

              What has happened to us?  If someone disagrees with me, it makes me mad or it hurts my feelings, and either way I don’t like him any more.  It is no longer about learning and growing—it about winning arguments and putting people down.  Instead of being able to trust a person because he is a brother, one must try to find a brother he can trust, and it isn’t easy.  That’s not just a shame, it’s a tragedy.  If a man say, I love God, and hates his brother, he is a liar: for he that loves not his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment have we from him, that he who loves God love his brother also. 1 John 4:20-21

              God meant us to learn and grow together, honing our skills and building one another up.  It might make us occasional sparring partners, but in that sparring we learn how to handle the word more accurately, we learn how to defeat the gainsayers who deny the Lord, and the false teachers who might be after our souls.  And after that sparring match, we “touch gloves” and leave with our love and respect intact.

              At least that’s the way it’s supposed to be.
 
Iron sharpens iron, and one man sharpens another. Proverbs 27:17
 
Dene Ward

We had a second stint of puppysitting recently and this time Chloe adapted more quickly.  By the end of the first day, she and now six month old Bella were romping together in the field.  Chloe was still the boss and called the shots—including the play schedule—but play they did, especially in the evenings when Chloe would crawl out from under the porch, stretch, look over her shoulder at Bella and scamper off with a toss of the head—an open invitation to “catch me if you can.”

              Bella also came with us when I gave Chloe her morning walk around the property.  Chloe usually accompanies me in a steady trot, stopping here and there to sniff at an armadillo hole or a depression at the bottom of the fence where a possum makes its nightly excursions.  Bella preferred to run everywhere, usually in the meandering lines of Billy, the little boy in the Family Circus comic.  Then when she suddenly looked up and found herself behind, she would come bulling her way past us in a brown blur.

              It was one of those times that particular morning and I heard her overtaking us like a buffalo stampede.  The path at that point was narrow, just room for me, my two walking sticks, and Chloe.  As Bella drew near, I just happened to be looking down when she very neatly leapfrogged over Chloe without disturbing a fur on her head.  In a few seconds she was around the bend and out of sight.

              I wonder how many we leapfrog over every day and leave in the dust behind us because we’re too impatient to wait, too unconcerned to care, too impulsive to even notice?  Sometimes the young with their new ideas, scriptural though they may be, have too little respect for the old warriors who need time to consider and be sure.  Sometimes the more knowledgeable become too arrogant to slow their pace for the babes or those whose capacity may not be as deep.  Sometimes the strong forget that God expects them to help the weak, the ill, the faltering.  All these people are just obstacles in our way, things to get past in our rush.

              When you leapfrog over a brother and leave him behind, how do you know he will make it?  God didn’t expect us to walk the path alone.  He meant for us to walk it together.  When you lack the love to walk it with your brother, you may as well not walk it at all.
 
Now we that are strong ought to bear the infirmities of the weak, and not to please ourselves. Let each one of us please his neighbor for that which is good, unto edifying. For Christ also pleased not himself; but, as it is written, The reproaches of them that reproached thee fell upon m. Romans 15:1-3.
 
Dene Ward

A three consecutive-day series.  I hope you will check in all three days!

We are puppysitting for some friends, a four month old chocolate lab named Bella.  She is already taller than our full-grown Australian cattle dog, though not as heavy, a long-legged gangly dog still with a puppy mindset—which means faster is better than slower, all things are meant to be chewed upon, and play time is the only time. 

              Chloe, on the other hand, is middle-aged, 6½, or about 45 in dog years.  To her the best things in the world are a belly scratch, a chewy treat, and a nap, and one of the worst things in the world is a puppy being foisted upon her carefully controlled domain.  She learned quickly that Bella has difficulty getting under the truck—something about all those long knobby leg bones getting in the way—so she spends the vast majority of her day there while Bella roams about being a curious puppy.  Someone I know well has learned not to leave things lying about outside if he doesn’t want them ventilated with puppy-teeth holes, something I consider an unexpected benefit to Bella’s visit.

              Chloe is not a purely sedentary lap dog, though.  She enjoys nosing around some, and will run back and forth to the gate to greet us.  She walks around the property with me and often leaves me in the dust when she spies something interesting in the corner woods.  Bella is walking with us now.  Her nose is always in the air, and her ears cocked for any sounds that might drift our way—one neighbor’s baying bloodhound and the other’s crowing rooster, for example.  But she doesn’t listen long.  As soon as she determines the direction, she is off in a shot while Chloe listens a bit more, making a studied determination about whether the sound needs investigating or not.

              Bella thinks everything is a game.  She has no ability to distinguish when it’s time to be serious.  Chloe will stop for a drink and Bella will be all over her, standing in the water, stepping on the edge of the pan, causing it to tilt and spilling the water everywhere.  When a frog jumps in the old tubs Keith uses to soak his hickory wood for smoking meat, she jumps right in after it, NOT looking before she leaps, landing belly deep with a splash.  Reminds me of the puppy we had once who thought the rattlesnake next to the woodpile was a toy and tried to play with it.  We managed to get him away before he was bitten, but when we left for a camping trip, the neighbor found him one morning with fang marks in his neck.  Lucky for him, the skin there was loose and that’s all the snake got, not the muscle in his neck.

              Yet despite their own preferences, both of these dogs are adapting.  Chloe finally learned to quit running away and stand up for herself.  After a nip or two on the nose, Bella knows who the boss is now and she will actually “bow” before Chloe, lowering her height by crouching on her belly in front of her.  Chloe will now stand nose to nose with her, sniffing, and then suddenly take off in a run, looking behind to make sure Bella is chasing her.  Bella has learned to be a little more discreet and Chloe has learned that fun is still—well, fun, and it’s worth having some once in awhile.

              Older and younger people—older and younger Christians, no matter their physical age—need to learn from one another in the same way.  We teach our children not to go running down the halls, especially among older people who have issues with balance and might be knocked over.  A fall for the elderly could easily lead to a broken bone, and how many broken bones have led to a fatal case of pneumonia?  That’s not something a child would ever think of, which is why the adults must teach them.  In the same way, babes in Christ mustn’t go running helter-skelter down our spiritual halls with no concern about the fragile souls we might encounter.  Yet, the older ones need to learn that we must go out into those halls and encounter those souls, not sit quietly and safely in our pews.

              The younger must learn the need for wisdom and discretion and the value of quiet reverence, but the older must learn that “emotion” is not a four letter word. 

              The younger must learn respect for those they label “nay-sayers.”  They must realize that those old “fuddy-duddy” cautions come from concern for their younger souls’ safety and good, not from cowardice or a lack of faith.  The older must remind themselves that God called them to take a risk, to exercise their faith not to sit in dusty rooms discussing it.

              The younger in the faith and the older in the faith—we learn from each other, but not if we’re too busy putting one another down, refusing to listen to one another, with attitudes full of disrespect and disdain. 
 
The glory of young men is their strength, but the beauty of old men is their gray hair, Prov 20:29.
 
Dene Ward

When I was a city girl, nearly forty years ago, I was scared to death of snakes.  I still don’t like them.  The difference is I can tolerate a non-poisonous one on the property now, trusting they will pay their way with all the rodents they keep out of my house; and when a poisonous one comes along I don’t freeze or run around in circles, screaming in hysteria--I just dispose of the thing.

              You know the best way to kill a snake?  Well, it may not actually be the best way, but the city girl in me thinks it’s perfect—a shotgun full of number one shot.  For those of you who are still city folks, that’s a load for large animals, like deer.  We had a rattler once when Keith was at work, and even though I kept from freezing or panicking to the point of uselessness, I still forgot to unload the larger shot and replace it with number four, a load for smaller animals.  That means when I shot that snake with that huge shot, I blew it to smithereens.  As I said, I was extremely satisfied.

              Well—mostly satisfied.  The thing kept right on writhing.  Yes, I know all about their reflexes and that they thrash about after death.  But that thing was flexing and re-flexing entirely too much to suit me.  So I got the .22 pistol and put a few more shots in it.  Then, I was satisfied.  When I picked the thing up with the tines of the rake to throw it into the burn barrel, it hung in chunks connected only with a few strings of skin—and it didn’t wiggle at all.  Best looking rattlesnake I ever saw.  The boys can make fun of me all they want, and laugh about it as they have for the past thirty-something years, but that snake was dead and there was no question about it.

              Some of us don’t make sure the snake is dead.  In fact, we not only leave it writhing, we put it somewhere for safe keeping just in case it isn’t dead after all.  That’s how we treat repentance.  I know I shouldn’t be indulging, so let me put it up on the shelf instead of down here on the counter top where I can see it every day.  I mustn’t be that obvious about it.  No!  Let’s get it out of the house altogether!  Whatever it is.

              It doesn’t have to be a huge sin of the flesh.  It doesn’t have to be a bottle of booze or a stack of pornography.  Sometimes it’s a gossip-fest.  I know that my friend always dishes the dirt, but I still make plans to see her every week.  If for some reason I must see her, then I go with no plan for how to avoid the sin, and yesiree, it pops up and, I just couldn’t help it, Lord.  You know how she talks—and how I listen. 

              Whatever it is, God expects me to kill that snake and make sure it’s dead.  Another one may come my way, but there is really no good reason for the same one to be making an appearance over and over.  If it does, I didn’t use the buckshot--I just shot a BB and missed.

              Don’t cuddle up to a rattlesnake.  Kill the thing, and make sure it’s dead.
 
Besides this you know the time, that the hour has come for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we first believed. The night is far gone; the day is at hand. So then let us cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light. Let us walk properly as in the daytime, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and sensuality, not in quarreling and jealousy. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires. Romans 13:11-14
 
Dene Ward

We had a pleasant surprise this year.  Besides the usual wrens’ nest in every odd place you can imagine, we had two hawks’ nests.  Two!  Hawks are very territorial, but they had set up their nests on opposite sides of the property, one just inside the east fence, and one just inside the west fence, as far from each other as they could possibly be and still be on our property.

              We have learned a lot about these birds and knew when to start listening for baby hawk noises.  Finally one morning we realized the mother was no longer in the east nest.  We peered long with the binoculars and called up to the nest.  Nothing.  A few days later we finally saw the dirty white downy baby head and the big black eyes.               

              After another week the baby sat up tall and we had a clear view for the first time.  It isn’t a hawk—it’s an owl!  A barred owl.  Although they usually have one or two siblings, this one appears to be an only child.  Its mother usually sits nearby on a low branch in a live oak arching over the creek, a two foot high chunky brown and gray bird with a round head and no ear tufts, horizontal bars across its shoulders and vertical streaks running down its chest.  In the evenings she flies to the garden and sits on a tomato post, just as the hawks have done for years now, occasionally swooping down to the ground to find dinner for the nestling. 

              The hawks have hatched now as well, two downy white babies that sit in the nest and peer over at me when I make the trek to the west side of the property to talk with them.  Both of their parents sit nearby when they aren’t out hunting up food, circling above and screaming their distinctive cry.

              We could talk about those parents and the care they give—in fact, I have done that before.  We could talk about the way the father watches over the mother as she sets, bringing her food, then taking his turn to set when she needs a break.  We’ve done that too.  Today, I want to talk about this:  I can’t possibly watch both nests at once.  I have to walk the entire long side of the property to see one, and then back to see the other.  I have often seen the hawks as they first learn to fly.  I may miss that this time around if I am watching the owl learn to fly on the same day.  So?

              Have you ever heard someone say, “I know God has more important things to deal with than my little problems?”  Is this supposed to be an excuse for a poor prayer life?  Is it supposed to be a proclamation of humility?  What it winds up being, if you think about it, is a lack of faith in the ability of God.  I can’t watch two nests, but God can.  Of the sparrows Jesus says, “Not one of them is forgotten in God’s sight,” (Luke 12:10).  Then he adds, “Fear not.  You are of more value than many sparrows.”  Not only does God consider my small problems important, He wants me to tell Him about them.

              The pagans of the world create gods they can understand based upon their own feelings.  The ancient Greek gods were the height of pettiness, malice, and cruelty.  Why?  Because the humans who created them imputed those far too human characteristics to their personalities.   We do exactly the same thing to God when we put Him in the box of our own human understanding.  “I know God has/does/thinks/feels…” is the height of presumptuousness.

              It is not for us to be describing God in any manner in which He does not describe Himself.  “I just know God would never…” may be the most obvious way we limit God, but it is not even the most common.  Even in our zealous attempts to be reverent by inventing words like “omniscient,” we are guilty of limiting Him to our own ability to understand.  God is Eternal—you cannot quantify an Eternal Being because you cannot even comprehend Infinity.  He is “able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think” Eph 3:20.

              Simply let His Word describe Him and our (in)ability to comprehend Him.

              Behold God is great and we know him not, Job 36:26.

              "Can you find out the deep things of God? Can you find out the limit of the Almighty? It is higher than heaven--what can you do? Deeper than Sheol--what can you know? Its measure is longer than the earth and broader than the sea, Job 11:7-9.

              Have you not known? Have you not heard? The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable [immeasurable], Isaiah 40:28.

              For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts, Isaiah 55:8-9.

              God thunders wondrously with his voice; he does great things we cannot comprehend, Job 37:5.

              Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways! "For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor?" Romans 11:33-34.

              It is not my place to figure out what God is doing or why, or even the possibilities of His power--He says it’s impossible to do so.  It’s not my business to decide whether my problems are big enough to bother Him with—He says to bother Him.  It’s not my business to decide what He might say or not say, do or not do, think or not think.  To do that is to limit Him to my understanding and to be a disrespectful child who thinks he deserves an explanation from a Sovereign Creator.  He has told me everything I need to know.  Reverence means I just accept that.
 
When I applied my heart to know wisdom, and to see the business that is done on earth, how neither day nor night do one's eyes see sleep, then I saw all the work of God, that man cannot find out the work that is done under the sun. However much man may toil in seeking, he will not find it out. Even though a wise man claims to know, he cannot find it out, Ecclesiastes 8:16-17.
 
Dene Ward

It's been awhile since we had one, but the other morning as we came in from our last cup of coffee on the porch, we looked uphill toward the gate and saw a wild turkey, a male by his colors, about a head shorter than the fence.  Every so often he stopped his awkward strut and pecked at the ground.  It was still early spring, so pickings were slim out there in the wild.  We assumed he would eventually head toward the bird feeders on the north side of the house and vacuum up the fallen seed as a relative or two of his has in the past.  He was not that patient.

              Suddenly he turned and walked straight at the fence, bouncing off and then standing there in what looked like turkey consternation.  He tried again, this time harder, but still couldn't get through.  So he took a few steps east and tried again.  And again.  Then he backtracked further west and practically ran at the fence, only to be flung backwards like a vertical trampoline, reeling and flapping his wings, the only things that kept him from landing on his turkey fanny.

              First, a little education for city slickers.  Turkeys hate to fly.  In fact, only a relatively short fence, far shorter than ours in fact, will keep them penned up successfully.  They will keep walking around it looking for an opening instead of flying over it.  Pretty much imminent danger, abject terror, or a real need for food are the only things that will make them fly, hence those nice tender turkey wings we love, I suppose.  So our visitor never even tried to get over the fence, he just kept trying to get through it, again and again and again.

              Have you ever known someone who just wouldn't learn the lessons of life and had to get knocked down again and again and again, like someone trying to bull his way through a solid wall?  Have you ever seen a person push back at God, though time and time again God tried to wake him up?  I have, and it is ever more frustrating to see someone find every excuse in the book for not listening.  He is no better than that turkey trying to walk through a fence over and over and over.  It isn't even new.

              Then the LORD said, “I have pardoned, according to your word. But truly, as I live, and as all the earth shall be filled with the glory of the LORD, none of the men who have seen my glory and my signs that I did in Egypt and in the wilderness, and yet have put me to the test these ten times and have not obeyed my voice shall see the land that I swore to give to their fathers (Num 14:20-23)

              Why then has this people turned away in perpetual backsliding? They hold fast to deceit; they refuse to return. (Jer 8:5)

              This evil people…refuse to hear my words [and] stubbornly follow their own... (Jer 13:10)

              They refused to obey and were not mindful of the wonders that you performed among them, but they stiffened their necks…(Neh 9:17)

              But they refused to pay attention and turned a stubborn shoulder and stopped their ears that they might not hear. (Zech 7:11)

              Not a flattering picture, and especially sobering when you realize that those are pictures of God's people over several centuries.  In other words, it happens all the time even to those who have seen God's power and goodness and "steadfast love," that covenant term which they thought as little of as garbage.  That means we, in yet another century, do it, too.

              And just as happened to them so it will to us if we follow their example:  He who is often reproved, yet stiffens his neck, will suddenly be broken beyond healing. (Prov 29:1)

              In today's slang we have a word for a fool and a loser, which is what you are when you are told again and again and still don't get it:  a turkey.  From what I saw the other morning, it is an apt term.
 
Thus says the LORD to me, “Go and buy a linen loincloth and put it around your waist, and do not dip it in water.” So I bought a loincloth according to the word of the LORD, and put it around my waist. And the word of the LORD came to me a second time, “Take the loincloth that you have bought, which is around your waist, and arise, go to the Euphrates and hide it there in a cleft of the rock.” So I went and hid it by the Euphrates, as the LORD commanded me. And after many days the LORD said to me, “Arise, go to the Euphrates, and take from there the loincloth that I commanded you to hide there.” Then I went to the Euphrates, and dug, and I took the loincloth from the place where I had hidden it. And behold, the loincloth was spoiled; it was good for nothing. Then the word of the LORD came to me: “Thus says the LORD: Even so will I spoil the pride of Judah and the great pride of Jerusalem. This evil people, who refuse to hear my words, who stubbornly follow their own heart and have gone after other gods to serve them and worship them, shall be like this loincloth, which is good for nothing. (Jer 13:1-10)
 
Dene Ward         

We put up several new feeders recently, along with some new bluebird houses and a couple of small birdbaths.  We hoped to increase both the numbers of birds visiting us, as well as the varieties, and we succeeded.  The very first day our usual birds had multiplied and there on the ground was a new one.  It didn’t take long to find him in the bird books I have—a brown-headed cowbird.

              The cowbird is a member of the blackbird family, and it is easy to think him some sort of blackbird.  That brown head is not obvious at a distance.  He stretches 7 to 8 inches from head to tail, glossy black with a chocolate brown head and a pointed gray bill.  Cowbirds do, however, have a negative trait—they lay their eggs in the nests of other birds, then go off and expect that bird to raise their young.  Sometimes the host bird will destroy the unfamiliar eggs, but far more often, they will raise the cowbird nestlings, often neglecting their own.  Cowbird chicks are so much larger than the hosts’ chicks that they take most of the food and leave the others hungry.

              Do you know what they call birds that steal nests and abandon their young to others?  Parasite birds.  I had never thought of it that way, but it is a legitimate biological classification.  Cuckoos do it.  Wood ducks do it.  In fact, about 750 species of birds do it.

             Humans wouldn’t do that, would they?  We wouldn’t ignore the sanctity of marriage between one man and one woman, breaking up a home at will just because “I want him now,” or “I don’t love her any more.”  Why can’t I steal someone else’s nest if I want it?

              I have things I want to do, a career that makes me important.  I’m not made for taking care of children--I shouldn’t be saddled with these kids.  Why can’t the government raise them for me?  Why can’t I hire someone to do the dirty work?  Why can’t I lay my eggs in someone else’s nest and expect them to be responsible for my children?

              Why do I have to work to support my family?  Why should I have to control my physical hungers?  Why can’t I live as I want and not have to bear the responsibility of what follows?  Why can’t I deposit my burdens in someone else’s lap to pay for and tend to?

              I wonder if biologists have a class of human called “parasitic.”  “Entitlement” comes to mind; “selfishness” as well, not to mention “irresponsibility.”  God holds us accountable for our lives, for our health, for our families, for all the privileges we claim, especially in the most blessed society in the world.  He expects us to exercise self-control.  He expects us to be mature in our choices and responsible for them.  He expects us to be considerate of others in those choices too.

              Now that I have about 95% of you agreeing with me, let’s take it one step farther.  What about Christians who deposit their children in Bible classes and expect the church to teach them?  Sometimes parents will see that the child does his lesson, but sometimes the teachers are lucky if a workbook accompanies a child at all, much less one that has been well-studied and filled out.  The Bible tells us that parents are to teach their children, not the church.  It is certainly commendable to take them to Bible classes, but the example they see many, many more hours a week at home is the one that they learn from.

              The brown headed cowbird is one of the most disapproved of birds in the avian world.  Why is that we think the same sort of behavior, in any of its manifestations, should be acceptable, even applauded, in ours?
 
But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty. For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without natural affection, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power. Avoid such people. 2 Timothy 3:1-5
 
Dene Ward

When America was first colonized, bluebirds were probably as profuse as the American Robin.  But they suffered a major decline between 1920 and the late 70s.  Winter freezes in the South in the 1890s, the late 1940s, and several in the 1950s and 70s left them without protection, food, and liquid water.  Changes in land use, highways, and loss of forest also contributed.  Their habitat was slowly disappearing.  Orchards with carefully pruned trees meant no more cavities in the trunks and branches, their preferred nesting sites.  Pesticides meant fewer insects for them to eat, and many of the bugs that survived were tainted with poison that killed the birds that ate them. Maybe the biggest problem was the introduction of House Sparrows (not true sparrows) and European Starlings.  These birds were aggressive competitors for both food and habitat.  By the 1980s, younger generations of Americans had never even seen a bluebird.
              On March 20, 1978 the North American Bluebird Society was incorporated under the direction of Dr. Lawrence Zeleny.  They flooded the public with information on the demise of practically everyone's favorite bird, and gave out instructions on building bluebird houses and maintaining bluebird trails.  Thanks largely to the efforts of individuals like you and me, the bluebird population is once again rising.
I have three bluebird houses.  I wondered one day what made a bird house a bluebird house and got an education I didn’t expect. 
              Bluebird houses are built in dimensions bluebirds like, shallow depth of 3½ to 5 inches.  I guess they like it cozy.  A good bluebird house has good drainage and cross ventilation.  It also has no perch outside the entrance, which keeps away predators.  A sparrow-proof bluebird house will have a slot entrance instead of a round hole because sparrows do not like slots, while bluebirds don’t mind them. 
              As for the monitoring, songbirds have a notoriously bad sense of smell, so it is perfectly acceptable to open the houses and check the nest and the fledglings every day for parasites or “squatters.”  Monitors can even rebuild the nest if parasites are found without upsetting the bluebird.  They also know the different types of nests and remove the ones that are not bluebird nests.  After a successful clutch has hatched and flown, they remove the old nest and clean it out for the next. 
              Do you think I can’t get any lessons out of this?  Watch me.
              Too many times we get picky about the people we share the gospel with.  I have heard things like, “We need to convert them.  They’d be a good addition to the church,” a thought based upon the lifestyle and income of the family in question rather than their need for the gospel.  We “sparrow-proof” the church by making it unfriendly and unattractive to the people we don’t want to deal with—who wants people with real problems? 
              We aren’t the only ones with that bad attitude.  The Pharisees thought it terrible that Jesus taught "sinners."  At least four times in the book of Luke we see them approaching either him or the disciples asking why he associated with such wicked people, (5:30; 7:39; 15:1,2; 19:7).  They turned their noses up at the very people they should have been trying to save.
              The first Christians were Jewish.  Guess who they did not want the apostles to convert?  Peter had to defend himself after he converted the Gentile Cornelius, Acts 11.  Defend himself, mind you, because he saved souls! 
              Then in James 2 we read of a church that didn’t want poor people among them.  They went out of their way NOT to welcome anyone who was not obviously well-to-do.
              If you have not seen attitudes like these, you are either blessed in the congregation you find yourself a part of, or not very old.  Keith was once chastised for bringing the “wrong class” of people to church.  They came from “the other side of the tracks.”
              The Lord didn’t die just for the bluebirds.  He died for those squawking, brash blue jays too.  He died for those territorial cardinals.  He died for those common, ordinary, dime-a-dozen sparrows.  He even died for those disgusting buzzards.  All those people need salvation too, not just the bluebirds. 
              Jesus told the Pharisees who questioned him three parables.  The last, the lost son, included an older brother who obviously did not want his little brother saved.  Jesus made it plain that the older brother was as much in need of grace as the younger.  It had to be obvious to those Pharisees that his remarks were directed to them.  They are directed to us too, when we try to make his house “for bluebirds only.”
 
For the love of Christ constrains us; because we thus judge, that one died for all, therefore all died;  and he died for all, that they that live should no longer live unto themselves, but unto him who for their sakes died and rose again.  From now on therefore we regard no one according to the flesh… 2 Cor 5:14-16.
 
Dene Ward

When we first moved here, we were surrounded by twenty acres of woods on each side.  We sat at the table and watched deer grazing at the edge of the woods while we ate breakfast.  Our garden was pilfered by coons and possums that could ruin two dozen melons and decimate a forty foot row of corn overnight.  We shot rattlesnakes and moccasins, and shooed armadillos out of the yard.  At night we listened not only to whippoorwills singing and owls hooting, but also to bobcats screaming deep in the woods.

              Then one morning I walked out to the chicken pen to gather eggs.  I stepped inside warily because the rooster had a habit of declaring his territory with an assault on whoever came through the gate, and as I watched for him over my shoulder, I realized that my subconscious count of the hens was off by one or two.  So I scattered the feed and carefully counted them when they came running to eat—one, two, three, four…nine, ten, eleven.  One was missing.

              I scoured the pen.  No chickens hiding behind the coop or under a scrubby bush.  I checked the old tub we used to water them just to make sure one had not fallen in, as had happened before.  Nothing quite like finding a drowned chicken first thing in the morning, but no chicken in the tub.  Then I left the pen and searched around it.  On the far side lay a trail of feathers leading off to the woods, but Keith was away on business and there wasn’t much I could do.  The next morning I counted only ten chickens and found yet another trail.

              We were fairly sure what was going on.  So when he got back home that day, he parked the truck up by the house, pointed toward the chicken pen, and that night when the dogs started barking, he stepped outside in the dark, shotgun in hand, and flipped on the headlights.  Nothing.  Every night for a week, he was out with the first bark, and every night he saw nothing.  But he never stopped going out to look.  At least the noise and lights were saving the chickens we still had.

              Then one night, after over a week of losing sleep and expecting once again to find nothing, there it was--a bobcat standing outside the pen, seventy-five feet across the field.  Keith is a very good shot, even by distant headlight.

              I still think of that trail of feathers sometimes and shiver.  I couldn’t help hoping the hen was already dead when she was dragged off, that she wasn’t squawking in fear and pain in the mouth of a hungry predator.

              Sometimes it happens to the people of God.  We usually think in terms of sheep and wolves, and the scriptures talk in many places of those sheep being “snatched” and “scattered.”  It isn’t hard to imagine a trail of fleece and blood instead of feathers.            

              I think we need to imagine that scene more often and make it real in our minds, just as real as that trail of feathers was to me.  Losing a soul is not some trivial matter.  It is frightening; it is painful; it is bloody; it’s something worth losing a little sleep over.  If we thought of it that way, maybe we would work harder to save a brother who is on the edge, maybe we would be more careful ourselves and not walk so close to the fence, flirting with the wolf on the other side.

              Look around you today and do a count.  How many souls have been lost in the past year alone?  Has anyone bothered to set up a trap for the wolf?  Has anyone even acknowledged his existence?  Clipped chickens, even as dumb as they are, do not fly over a six foot fence, but a bobcat can climb it in a flash and snatch the unwary in his jaws.  Be on the lookout today.
 
I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. He who is a hired hand and not a shepherd, who does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and flees, and the wolf snatches them and scatters them. He flees because he is a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep. I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father; and I lay down my life for the sheep. John 10:11-15
 
Dene Ward

This business of treating small dogs as fashion accessories strikes me as a little barbaric.  I’m surprised PETA hasn’t stepped in and complained.  Of all people, they should take offense at an animal being treated as an inanimate object.

              I understand loving an animal.  I have cried at the loss of every dog and cat we ever had.  I planted flowers on Magdi’s grave, one that blooms all summer and one that blooms spring and fall.  The only time I can’t look out the window and know at a glance where she lies is the middle of winter.  But she had her place and it wasn’t in my purse.

              Some people treat pet peeves as if they were real pets, live creatures that must be fed and cared for.  In fact, feeding is a good word for the way they nurture those peeves at every opportunity.  Understand, I am not talking about matters of sin and morality, but things we like or don’t like, opinions we hold about certain behaviors, and even matters of courtesy.  Courtesy is usually a cultural notion, not one of moral right and wrong.  It may bug me to death to be in an elevator with someone yelling into a cell phone, but I doubt it will send him to hell.

              If it is possible, so far as it depends upon you, live peaceably with all, Rom 12:18.  Nowadays, when our culture is calling on us to take a stand on things we used to take for granted, it is even more important that we not raise a fuss over the inconsequential.  “Choose your battles,” something parents must learn so their children won’t view them as prison guards but as wise guides instead.  We need to learn that in regard to pet peeves too.

              When you take that unpopular moral stand, no one will listen if all you have done before is rant about minor things at every opportunity.  No one will care what your opinion is or how well you back it with facts when they are used to tuning you out.  If, on the other hand, you have always been fair-minded, cool-tempered, and tolerant of others’ social gaffes, making allowances for them without even being asked, when something comes along that actually causes you to stand up and speak, they are far more likely to pay attention—and consider.

              It is also important to stifle those pet peeves with your brothers and sisters in the Lord.  Be at peace among yourselves…seek peace and pursue it…suffer wrong [for the sake of peace]…be one…so that the world may know you have sent me, 1 Thes 5:13; 1 Pet 3:11; 1 Cor 6:7; John 17:22,23.  God could not have made it plainer that how we get along with one another affects far more important things than our own personal agendas.  Today we must be as tightly bound as the threefold cord spoken of in Eccl 4:12.  We need one another when the world turns against us and labels us “hateful” simply because we exercise our American right to disagree and, much more important, our Christian obligation to speak out.  If my reputation precedes me as an irrational ranter who isn’t worth listening to, it isn’t just myself I am hurting, but the Lord and His cause.

              I must stop tending those pet peeves as if they were pedigreed pooches, when all they are is a crack in my armor.  Who do you imagine rejoices the most when I lose it over a trifling matter of preferences?  The Lord or Satan? 

              We are all sojourners on the same trip, stopping for a night at a second rate motel.  No pets allowed.
 
A fool’s wrath is known at once, but the prudent ignores an insult…a fool utters all his anger, but a wise man keeps it back and stills it…love covers a multitude of sins, Prov 12:16; 29:11; 1 Pet 4:8.
 
Dene Ward