I was sitting at my desk, in my
office, when a noise attracted my attention.
Strangely, it wasn’t coming from the hallway, where people bustle up and
down and the nurses offer to tell the patients how much the weigh in pounds
(since our scales are set to kilograms).
Instead, it was coming from the large window that looks out on a bit of
scrubby woods and the parking lot behind our office.
Usually, there isn’t much out
there, maybe a squirrel or two. Very occasionally,
a cardinal will add a splash of scarlet to my drab winter days.
This morning, there was a
different visitor. A small songbird sat
on a branch outside the window. He seemed
to be watching me through the glass and then I noticed a crown of crimson on
top of his head.
I watched as he flew from his
perch and floated towards the window and then fluttered up and down against it,
then, flew back to the twig where he had rested before.
I realized that the bird wasn’t
trying to visit the amazing family practice doctor he had heard so much about
in Brookneal, but rather was upset by his reflection that was conjured up in
the window. Clearly, he believed that here
was another ruby-crowned kinglet trying to move in on his territory and like an
Italian mob boss, he wasn’t having any part of it.
“I think I’ll call him Bill,” I
said to myself, certain that this plucky little fellow hadn’t been given any
such birth name by his parents.
For the next two days, Bill
spent an awful lot of time outside my window.
I didn’t really have time to track all of his movements, after all, I am
a physician not an ornithologist and my patients would get discouraged if I
made them wait hours simply because I was bird watching.
Bill spent most of his time
eyeing the intruder. Occasionally, he
would move to attack, but this was worse than sitting on the perch, because no
sooner did he fly towards his reflection, but lo and behold, the bird in the reflection
flew towards him and not being very aggressive, he didn’t like that much.
Finally, on the third day, apparently,
he decided he had vanquished the visiting bird, and flew away, thinking no
more on the intruder or the famous physician he had visited.
I missed Bill, although I was glad,
he had stopped flying at his reflection.
It struck me that many people
in our world today live their lives looking for threats. They rose to power in their organizations by
tearing down others and now, they fear that someone else will gain an advantage
over them in just the same way.
Many a dictator has had to
order the execution of family members simply because he was afraid that they were
going to usurp his authority.
It makes me sad when I see
these sorts of machinations in a church setting. Jesus told His followers at the Last Supper, “By
this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to
another.” (John 13:35)
Churches should not be places
of politics and power grabs. They should
be spaces filled with love – both of God and for fellow church members. The greatest of us in this space is to be
known as the ones who serves the most.
Together, we are so much more than any one of us is separately.
I am afraid that many of us
forget this, and we port the power structures of the world into the church
setting. Boards and elders and pastors
rule, ostensibly under the leadership of “King Jesus.”
In the church, we should not
see fellow servants as threats needing to be attacked and kept down, but rather
as people who need to be loved. Even as we
embrace them, we will discover that they are like us – not
a threat, but someone made as a reflection of our Creator.
