Crows and Kind
Posted by on Thursday, October 30, 2008
Under: 2008.06 "Crows and Kind"
As most of my regular readers know, I get a lot of my messages from life; either my own or experiences of others. Human behavior can be a great teacher. Nature is also an interesting teacher... if we take the time to notice. Whether we observe people, plants, birds, beasts, or bugs, God fills our lives with object lessons that can become a living Bible story.
I watch critters, big and small, from my kitchen window, and have written previous articles about a few. Lately, I have been watching the sky. The hawks and the eagles are so majestic. Then, there are the buzzards and crows. One day my daughter and I were discussing various birds circling overhead, and she asked me if I knew that crows are the only birds that fly TOWARD the sound of a gunshot. I thought about it a moment and said "Yes... it sounds like a dinner bell to them!"
Later, I started to think about other scavenger animals, like sharks and jackals. By land, sea or air, nature has her own garbage men. God has arranged to keep His planet tidy.
Sharks can smell the tiniest amount of blood in the ocean, even from a great distance away..."soup's on"! Jackals can also smell blood and run to finish off the wounded. It doesn't take too many years of living to see how the lines between human and animal behavior can sometimes become blurred. Our pets can act like our kids and our neighbors can act like animals, lol... which brings me to this month's lesson!
For quite some time now, my heart has been burdened as to how we, the Church, are living our daily lives... how we are portraying Christ to an unsaved world. So far, the first half of this year, my attention has been on God's family. I am so concerned that we are falling short of our mission. Our lives are not measuring up to our revelation! It has come to my attention that even though we are Christians, very few of us are CHRIST-LIKE! Recently, within my close circle of Christian friends, one of us suffered a terrible heartbreak. A middle-aged lady married a man she scarcely knew, only to have him leave her a few weeks later. If this wasn't tragic enough, the oddest thing happened... the animals took over!
The crows heard the gunshot, the sharks and the jackals smelled the blood, and the buzzards circled. Incredibly, every one of them were Christians, but alas, none were CHRIST-LIKE!
The crow cawed, "Well, I knew 3 weeks ago, that marriage was doomed," while pecking at the wounds. The jackal howled, "I told her she didn't know how to treat a man right," as it lapped up the blood. The buzzard hissed, "She always did jump too quick into things... she was just too desperate," snatching a piece of flesh from the moaning soul.
This wounded heart had become a living sacrifice who had done nothing wrong. She had prayed for guidance, felt God's peace, searched the Word, and sought the counsel of the elders... yet it all fell apart.
Instead of her CHRIST-LIKE friends gathering around her to comfort, pray with her, give her a hug, or just BE there for her, the "Christian" scavengers (gossips) circled to pick her bones, lick their lips, and even seemed to enjoy her calamity.
It is a dark day when a covenant is broken, especially when Christians enter into a marriage covenant, with God as the third party. It is a time of deep mourning. Counseling, comforting, and prayer is needed and attempts toward reconciliation should be made, if at all possible.
Genesis 15 tells of a covenant cut between God and Abraham. Abraham was instructed to offer several animals as a sacrifice and exactly how to arrange the pieces. Before God returned to receive the offering, Abraham had to fight off the birds of prey who had gathered to steal it.
The dear heart in my story did have some assistance from a couple Christ-like Christians who came along side her; they and the Holy Spirit strengthened her to fight off the scavengers, who never did repent. May God convict their hearts, and forgive them.
Too many Christians treat a fallen brother or sister like road kill. They swoop in to pick their bones. Several years ago, we had a prime example of that between 2 famous TV ministries... very ugly. It wasn't long afterwards that the big crow publically got caught in a scandal of his own... neither ministry ever recovered.
A very wise teacher once said, "The Army of God is the only army on earth that shoots their own wounded." Sad but true. Rather than rushing in like Red Cross medics to give emergency assistance to our fallen, we run in like a self-appointed SWAT team.
We must keep our mouths off one another, lest we get caught in our own mess, if for no other reason... and follow the example of the Good Samaritan as told in Luke 10:30-37. The Samaritans were considered as unclean dogs by the righteous Jews, or an unsaved sinner by the Church today. Yet this unclean sinner was the only one out the bunch of so called "righteous" that went the whole nine yards to save one of their own!
I don't know where we get off feeling so self-righteous when the Apostle Paul taught us in Romans 3:10 "...there is none righteous, no not one."
Jesus said He went to prepare a place for us that where He is, there we would be also" (John 14:1-3). I believe He has already done that. The mansions are ready and waiting for us. The hold-up is we, the Bride, are not ready. Was Paul the only one who labored in birth till Christ be formed in us (Galatians 4:19)?
As pastors, teachers and elders, we must help our congregations become Christ-like. As godly parents, we especially stand on the frontlines of humanity guiding the next generation into "Christ-likeness."
Since we may be the only Bible some people ever read, we all must lead by our own example. Jesus is coming for those who are watching and waiting for His coming. Our own lives must become a living New Testament... the living Word... CHRIST-LIKE. We are each accountable for those Jesus has placed in our lives. The sooner we shape up, the sooner we ship out of here, taking many others with us.
May the Holy Spirit who lives within us, come to the forefront of our lives. May we overcome our carnal nature by His power and be determined to live a Christ-like life.
The young people used to wear bracelets with WWJD (What Would Jesus Do) on them. We have to get back to that principle... What Would Jesus Do, in every aspect of life.
Our lives and times are going to get much harder in this world before that trumpet sounds (1 Thess. 4:16-18). I saw a dear old nun on TV once who said, "Life stinks, and ya gotta have Jesus to make it through." She sure grabbed my attention, LOL!
Life IS hard and we must have Jesus to help us to live it. The wonder of having Jesus in it with us is, life doesn't SEEM so hard. He brings joy and peace to us when we ALLOW Him to take control. We don't have to be full of defeat and woe. He has given us an ABUNDANT life (John 10:10).
If we fall and the birds of prey circle, Jesus drives them off until we can rise up and finish our race. And because of His great love and mercy for us ALL, and His unwillingness that any of us should perish, God will deal with those crows later! AMEN!!
God Bless You All,
Pastor Moser
June, 2008
W.O.W.
You have to SEE it, before you can BE it!
The Home Place Mission had a former site and the time came where we had to switch web site hosts. Our email had to be changed as well. In transferring the articles over, every effort was made to correct any inferences to the old email address (the new one is on the home page). Also, all articles containing hyper links were needing updated too. Please forgive us if some things may have been overlooked. Because this page is in a blog format, the date we transferred each article over is what shows under the title when opened. The correct date each article was written is beside the title under the category column. We apologize for the blog format, as it is not as "user-friendly" as our old site but we do hope you find the articles encouraging and are blessed by the insights shared! Thank you for reading!
