This is something that crossed my life path last year. Last March actually. We talked about it in our house church. Recently it's come up again in conversation with a friend. You know, some of us wonder why it's so much work to assemble. And some of us are wonder, "Why learn more truth about God? Why add more disciplines? What's the point?"
Geese or Sparrows?
Watching a flock of Canada geese fly over in precise V-formation is an enthralling sight? How do you suppose they do that? Do they attend V-formation flying school when they are young? I can just see a older goose projecting a Powerpoint presentation against a birch tree and explaining to the younger birds that they must fly two feet to the outside wing of the goose in front of them, one foot behind and eighteen inches above its flight path so it will impress the humans below.
No, geese fly in a V-formation because flying in that exact spot allows them to fly in smoother air with less effort. If a goose falls out of position it immediately feels the added stress of flying on its own and moves back into position. Scientists estimate that by drafting on the wake of the goose in front of them the entire flock is able to fly 71% further than each of them could fly individually. To accomplish this incredible feat the stronger birds in the flock will rotate the lead position so that no one bird wears out. According to NASA, “This allows a flock of birds with differing abilities to fly at a constant speed with a common endurance.”
The reason you never see a flock of sparrows fly in V-formation is because they are not going anywhere. They flit around the yard from tree to tree, but at the end of the day they are in the same area. They could try to learn to fly in a V-formation, but by the time they got the formation together they would already be to the next tree and not need it. The same is true about fellowship. If Christianity is about rituals, routines and morals, our fellowship will suffer. We can rearrange our groupings or try a number of novel small-group techniques, but they will be as awkward as sparrows trying to fly in formation. But when Christianity is a life of growing dependence on God through the joys and challenges of our circumstances, pooling our wisdom becomes a natural extension of that life for us as it is for geese to fly in formation. When God is more real to you than the weather and the events of your day, you’ll find him filling your conversations and fellowship will be immediate, powerful and alive.
The point, actually, is life. Anything that is not producing it is a chasing after the wind, not being born of the Wind.
4 comments:
This is fascinating, and it reveals so much.
None of the geese wake up one day and say, "Hmmm, that flying-in-formation thing looks fun. I think I'll try it." None of them have to prove to the others that they are a goose. None of the other geese have to convince them to come along. No one has to show them the way, or encourage them to hurry up and fly straight. They don't even have to practice.
They. just. have. to. be. geese.
We. just. have. to. be. Jesus.
what I see in this is one of the things we've talked about, Steve.
Are we on a journey, a long trip toward something/somewhere which will sustain us for the next season?
Or instead is our life as Followers one of flitting around from circumstance to circumstance? Do we flit to Jesus in perpetual kneejerk mode, crying for Him to heal or bless the crisis of the moment, or is our life to be more than that?
I see my life as the former. A long, tiring, often hard journey, but I am going somewhere the sparrows will never go. Yet they question and doubt both where I'm going and the manner in which I go.
I am no better than the sparrows, just different.
Steve, I've thought about what you are saying quite a bit. In fact, I've thought about my own beloved church and how people, when given free reign will still gravitate toward developing "rituals" simply because it makes part of their time together less like work and allows worship to be less burdensome. For instance, my wife cooked breakfast at our church for several months. She introduced many dishes in the beginning and ended up serving the same thing every week simply because that is what the majority were eating and it reduced the work involved. The same could be said of music style, flow of the time together (pray, sing, read, pray, sing, read, discuss, read, discuss, sing, sing, pray, etc.), etc. Unless we limit our meetings to small groups aren't we apt to develop "traditions" or "rituals" characteristic of the people that have been meeting the longest?
Yes, I do think that a group left on its own without external stimuli will come to rest in a sort of equilibrium. That's why I pray for disasters, issues, challenges, assaults, windfalls, etc. Anything to upset the balance and get us out of flitting around, tree to tree, and up on the wind.
The danger is in becoming stale, which is what happens when you sit in one place too long. Bread is to be eaten, and did you ever think that bread is a very versitile food that you can take anywhere?
The Bible uses lots of imagery to suggest we are being baked into this loaf of bread, presumably to be eaten by the world we are sent to save. Jesus talked about us being seperated like wheat and chaff, being salted like the grain offerings of Israel, being leavened, and being cooked by fire.
And again, nobody bakes bread to leave it sitting around. It's no good to have a meeting to decide how to best arrange the bread for rotting. Bread is for eating. For consuming. For giving away. Jesus is the Bread of Life that came down from Heaven. Shall we be the bread of life that rotted on the table? I think we will unless we realize that we are baked together and we simply offer ourselves to be consumed, spent, used up by the hungry. Together.
George Barnard Shaw wrote,
I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake.
Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote,
What I do is me
For this I came
Can we say,
We want to be thoroughly used up when we die, for the harder we rest, the more we live. We rejoice in life for its own sake. What we do is us. For this we came..."?
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