Three Baby Birds
"Therefore, rid yourselves of all malice and all deceit, hypocrisy, envy,
and slander of every kind. Like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk,
so that by it you may grow up in your salvation, now that you have tasted
that the Lord is good." (1 Peter 2:1-3 NIV)
As a breeder of Lineolated Parakeets, getting up at in the wee hours of the
morning to hand-feed baby birds has become commonplace. 14 day-old linnies
generally adapt to hand-feeding rather quickly, and so it was with two of
the first three babies I pulled from the nests this Spring. After just a
day, Chibi and Merlin were readily taking the spoon, alerting to the sounds
of feeding preparations, and despite the fact that I looked nothing at all
like a mother bird, in no time their little crops were like balloons nearing
their bursting point.
Not so with Pitrie. Pitrie was far too smart for handfeeding. He new
perfectly well that the cold, hard spoon looked and felt nothing like a
mother bird. As for the "stuff" on it? Well, it was the wrong color, the
wrong consistency, and definitely too cold. But if we heated it up, then it
was too hot! Bottom line, it tasted nothing in the world like "birdie vomit"
(the special food parent birds prepare in their crops to regurgitate into
the open mouths of their babies), and he wanted no part of it.
His response to what he surely thought of as "nonsense" was to stubbornly
turn his head away from the spoon. If I persisted in getting a tiny drop
into his mouth, he would venomously spit it back at me. After the third day,
feeding Pitrie still took nearly 20 minutes, and even then, his little crop
was still floppy.
As he was spitting the formula back out at me at 4 a.m. of day four of his
hand-feeding routine, I couldn't help but think how much these baby birds
were like baby Christians. As new Christians, we are literally pulled out of
the only world we've ever known and thrown into a completely foreign one.
The only problem is, we continue to physically live in the old world!
The early apostles refer to Christians as "aliens" and "strangers" (see 1
Peter 2:11, Heb 11:13). This is because although we continue to live in it,
the old world no longer accepts or understands us. In order to survive as
"aliens" and "strangers" in a world that was once our home, we are told to:
"rid yourselves of all malice and all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and slander
of every kind." (1 Peter 2:1). We need to separate ourselves from the
"birdie vomit" of the world. We need to leave behind the old lives of
addictions and anger and unforgiveness, and to do so, we have to stop
feeding ourselves with the things of the world. Instead, we are told to
crave spiritual things: "Like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk, so
that by it you may grow up in your salvation, now that you have tasted that
the Lord is good." (1 Peter 2:2-3).
For some, the feeding process is a pleasure. Just like Merlin and Chibi
readily took to hand-feeding, some new Christians eagerly drink in the Word
of God, taking every opportunity to spend time with their new-found Friend.
They read their Bibles, they attend Bible studies, they take in the Word
spoken from the pulpit, they immerse themselves in Christian books and
movies and music, and they immediately recognize how much better their lives
have become.
Not so with every new Christian. Just like Pitrie, who fought the feeding
process, many turn away from any type of spiritual food, desperately
clinging to the world. "Church is boring," they say. "Why can't the Bible be
written in understandable terms?" And "What am I going to gain from praying
to someone I can't even see?"
By the end of day four, I was seriously worried about Pitrie. If he
continued to refuse the spoon, I would be forced to return him to the nest,
back to the "birdie vomit", in order to keep him from dying of malnutrition.
But the story has a better ending than that. When I got up at 4 a.m. on day
5, he willingly took the spoon. Whew!
Pitrie is now 12 weeks old. As I was in the process of preparing his crate
yesterday for his upcoming plane trip to Calgary, his new home, I realized
that he had turned into one of the sweetest babies we have ever raised. Why?
Because he gave up his "birdie vomit" and accepted the spoon. Only when new
Christians give up the world and accept the sweet, pure food of the Word of
God will they grow to maturity. Otherwise, they will simply return to the
world they came from.
What will it be, friends? The "birdie vomit" the world dishes out? Or the
pure, sweet "milk" of God's Spirit? Let's give up our "Pitrie" ways and
become more like Chibi and Merlin!
Lyn Chaffart