{"id":3194,"date":"2023-11-27T07:37:23","date_gmt":"2023-11-27T12:37:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/js1cd06kre.onrocket.site\/?p=3194"},"modified":"2023-11-27T07:38:39","modified_gmt":"2023-11-27T12:38:39","slug":"the-spirit-helps-us-grow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/2023\/11\/27\/the-spirit-helps-us-grow\/","title":{"rendered":"The Spirit Helps Us Grow"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast, click here<\/a>

During the month of November, we\u2019re taking a look at 21 essential activities of the Holy Spirit, who represents God\u2019s presence in and through every follower of Jesus.<\/em>
 
What\u2019s wrong with this picture? 
 
A robin has returned to its nest, only to find an unexpected addition to its clutch of eggs. 
 
Robin eggs are easy to spot.  Their striking color has long been described as \u201crobin\u2019s egg blue.\u201d  That speckled egg, on the other hand, is clearly going to hatch into a brother from a different mother.  It was laid by a brown-headed cowbird, a member of the blackbird family known for its cleverness as a brood parasite. 
 
Cowbirds are squatters.  Since they never make nests of their own, they force other birds to raise their young. 
 
A cowbird hen will wait until a more enterprising species \u2013 robins, for instance \u2013 have finished crafting their nest and laying their eggs.  When the host birds are off running errands, she will swoop in, lay a single egg, then get out of there fast.  The whole process takes less than 10 seconds.  Ornithologists tell us that cowbirds have been known to pull this fly-in-fly-out trick on 247 other species.  A single female can lay up to 70 eggs during one season. 
 
Some host birds aren\u2019t fooled.  They immediately identify and eject the alien egg. 
 
Other hosts, who apparently struggled on the math portion of their SATs, don\u2019t seem to notice their nursery is now plus-one. 
 
Then the eggs hatch.  Within a few days, the cowbird chick almost always proves to be larger and more aggressive than its \u201csiblings.\u201d  Everyone in the family quickly discovers that the biggest baby gets the biggest breakfast.  The host chicks may even be muscled out of the nest. 
 
And just like that, the cowbird population grows while other species struggle. 
 
There\u2019s something about this reality that exasperates many birdwatchers, as well as anyone who thinks that justice ought to prevail in the world.  After all, it sure seems as if the planet would be a nicer place with more robins, warblers, and hummingbirds and a lot fewer drab, conniving cowbirds. 
 
But the cowbird\u2019s behavior, upon examination, turns out to be disturbingly familiar to all of us.
 
Sports psychologist Jim Loehr notes that whatever we choose to feed will grow.  What we allow to be crowded out of our lives will starve.  \u201cInvest energy in patience and it will grow, like a muscle.  Conversely, if you invest energy in impatience, then it<\/em> will grow.  By giving something energy, you give it life.\u201d 
 
This is true when it comes to your job.  And your relationships with your kids.  And your ability to play a musical instrument.  And your spiritual disciplines.  Stop investing energy, and such things will inevitably begin to falter. 
 
Compassion, generosity, trust, and integrity all respond to the degree of energy we choose to provide.  If they get nothing but the leftovers, they will be pushed out of our lives and die of starvation.  As Loehr puts it, \u201cWhen we give something energy, we grow it.  When we give something extraordinary energy, it grows extraordinarily.\u201d 
 
This seems to be what Paul has in mind as he closes his letter to the Galatians:
Don\u2019t be misled: No one makes a fool of God. What a person plants, he will harvest. The person who plants selfishness, ignoring the needs of others\u2014ignoring God!\u2014harvests a crop of weeds. All he\u2019ll have to show for his life is weeds! But the one who plants in response to God, letting God\u2019s Spirit do the growth work in him, harvests a crop of real life, eternal life.  So let\u2019s not allow ourselves to get fatigued doing good. At the right time we will harvest a good crop if we don\u2019t give up, or quit.  <\/em>(Galatians 6:7-9, \u201cThe Message\u201d).
 
Note that turn of phrase, \u201cletting God\u2019s Spirit do the growth work.\u201d
 
God\u2019s indwelling Spirit not only helps us discern the true condition of our hearts \u2013 \u201cYou need to starve that desire, and feed this one instead!\u201d \u2013 but gives us the strength to do what we could never do on our own. 
 
Spiritual growth doesn\u2019t happen by accident, but by purposeful activity. 
 
Yes, every now and then someone randomly selected from the crowd at a basketball game and given the chance to win $10,000 by sinking a half-court shot, actually succeeds.  But everyone, including the shooter, knows that shot had a lot more to do with luck than skill. 
 
We can\u2019t go through life counting on \u201clucky shots\u201d when it comes to walking with God and other people. 
 
If you must, out of the blue, respond to someone who has seriously hurt you, forgiveness isn\u2019t likely to \u201cjust happen\u201d \u2013 not if you have spent your life feeding the hungry chick of bitterness, while starving the more deserving chicks of compassion, empathy, and love. 
 
As Paul puts it, nobody fools God.  We can\u2019t suddenly pull ourselves together spiritually when things get tough \u2013 not if we have systematically ignored the Spirit\u2019s nudges.
 
But today is a new day.  Today we can begin again. 
 
Feed the new life to which you have been called.  Starve the habits and attitudes that you know are peace-killers, joy-killers, and hope-killers.  
 
When it comes to walking with God\u2019s own Spirit, we don\u2019t have to end up laying an egg.    <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast, click here During the month of November, we\u2019re taking a look at 21 essential activities of the Holy Spirit, who represents God\u2019s presence in and through every follower of Jesus. What\u2019s wrong with this picture?  A robin has returned to its nest, only to find an unexpected addition to its clutch of eggs.  Robin eggs are… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3195,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[646,352],"class_list":["post-3194","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-growth","tag-holy-spirit"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3194","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3194"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3194\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3197,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3194\/revisions\/3197"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3195"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3194"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3194"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3194"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}