How many pastors feel like this bird-feeder, pooped on by those they are trying to help?
As I have said in previous posts I have bird-feeders, but if one expects the birds to care where they leave their droppings, think again. You might think that a bird would respect the area where they got their food, but they don’t. Its the sort of thing that brought the phrase “bird-brain” into the English language. But some Christians are not much better when they speak negatively about those who feed them spiritually. Whether it is the church itself or its leadership. The difference is that they should have the intelligence to realise the damage they are causing. There must be many pastors who feel that they are like my bird-feeder at some stage in their career. It easy to criticise, and nobody is perfect, but there are occasions when it gets out of hand. This is at its most painful when it is those that the church or its pastor has gone furthest to help turns on them. Sometimes this might arise from an innocent misunderstanding, at other times it is deliberately malicious. Of course, the birds that poop on the feeder may not necessarily be the birds that are using the feeder itself, some are too big to use them. Likewise some criticism comes from without a congregation/fellowship. This might be expected from different ends of the spectrum of Christian traditions but sometimes the most vicious can come from closer to home. Some nuance of Biblical interpretation is often taken greater exception to than if a core doctrine is questioned. I know that in the past I have attended meetings with an imaginary tick-list looking for some fault or another for which I can mark them down. In this age of social media it is even easier to say something that should have been left unsaid. There was a report a year or two back from Police Scotland that there had been a decline in reported physical acts of violence, but a corresponding increase in malicious comments online. Too many click the send button before they engage their brain. There is an acronym to discourage harmful statements:- T.H.I.N.K., which asks people to consider what they say before they blurt it out. T, is it True? H, is it Helpful? I, is it Inspiring? N, is it Necessary? And K, is it Kind? I have to admit that not everything that I have said in my life passes that test. Even so Job’s comforters probably would have argued that they were in line with the above acronym but the Lord rebuked them, Unfortunately it is a lot easier to clean the mess off my bird-feeder than restore the reputation of someone who has been falsely accused of something so be careful.
David Rose, 2016.
(Apologies due to technical difficulties I was unable to upload the document directly, and my scanner seemed to have stopped working as well, so I had to photo it instead and upload it that way.) The basic thoughts that brought about the text on the photo occurred some years ago when I was reading the latter chapters of 1 Chronicles where David makes preparation after preparation for the temple which he had been told not to build himself. It almost seemed that all Solomon had to do was assemble the kit of parts when he became king. When you read these chapters it seems to be more of David’s temple than Solomon’s. In building Solomon was very much accomplishing his father’s will. It was then that I saw the parallel with Jesus and his prayer to do the Father’s will. Last week at church there had been a theme about David so I thought I would produce this piece. The idea is that those who want a copy can click on the photo and print a copy for themselves if they find it inspiring.
The mountains were covered in snow but the valley floor was clear. As I walked towards the River Spey I noticed some birds in birch trees as I passed them and amongst them yellowhammers which usually fly off…
The mountains were covered in snow but the valley floor was clear. As I walked towards the River Spey I noticed some birds in birch trees as I passed them and amongst them yellowhammers which usually fly off when they see a telephoto lens but on this occasion they hung around to photographed. When I reached the river and walked along in a downstream direction I noticed a dipper on the far bank. Again it allowed me to take a few pictures. And so it went on, I also saw goldeneye and a pair of goosanders. It was late afternoon when I reached the north end of the golf course and began to head back though I was distracted with bird calls a couple of times. There is a stretch of the riverside walk where it on top of an earthen cliff quite high above the river when I heard a splash which I initially assumed must have been a fish surfacing and stopped to look what had caused it but my vision was partially obscured by the trees along the bank. There was another splash nearby and then another. I was beginning to get my eye in but it took several glimpses of the creature to realise that it was an otter because I had never seen one in the wild. My first attempts to photograph it were hindered by the trees and I had to use manual focus but the time it spent on the surface was usually so short that by the time I focused on it was beginning to dive again.
Eventually, it came onto the bank to swallow a catch and I managed to get several shots of it before it returned to the river. It was gradually moving downstream to a place where the cliff was not so steep and by going ahead I managed to descend down towards the river’s bank and get better shots of it.
Even so I still had to use manual focus to see through the overhanging vegetation so most shots were often slightly out of focus. The above picture is one of sharpest taken. Then it came ashore again a few yards upstream. But it was largely hidden by a fallen branch and when I took a picture the flash went off and it jumped to a position right in front of me. Its face was partially obscured by grass and I took a couple quick shots but only the second one was in focus. The flash went off both times and it was clearly disturbing the otter.
cairngormmusings 