Coco Calling No. 79 - The Banishment of Gregory Peck.....

I recently read an article about bullying. Yes, it said that “bullying is the manifestation of a primitive need to become the leader of the pack. The modern day bully believes he is a human being, but he is really an animal.” I had to chuckle, because bullies are not always human beings; they can be animals in the first place! As my owner recently discovered.

Earlier in the week, a new pheasant moved into town. Or, to be more precise, the front garden. He was an extra-large bird and a “loner.”

He didn’t mix with any of his fellow-kind; the others all stayed away from him by the bird feeders in the back garden. And “Gregory Peck,” as he became known, certainly didn’t want to mix with my owner.

It all began with Gregory Peck chasing my owner’s car up and down the lane outside. Then things went from bad to worse. While the car was parked in the driveway, he’d sit on its roof, waiting for my owner to come out of the front door. Then he’d fly at him, lashing out with his beak and spurs in a frenzied attack. Soon, my owner could only exit through the front door if he was armed with an umbrella for self-defence.

Then one day, my owner joined me in the kitchen to wash the dishes. Suddenly, there came a loud “crash” at the window, and there, sitting on the window sill the other side was the pheasant, with a malevolent look in his eye! He pecked the glass and stormed up-and-down trying to get in for an attack! Things were now very much out of control. So my human family hatched a plan. My owner was used as “the human bait.”

So while Gregory Peck was busy attacking him outside, the rest of the family threw an old blanket over him, bundled him up, and placed him in a box. After a little drive, Gregory Peck was released to begin a new life in a field of his own. And peace has been restored.

The Bible is full of stories of aggressors and trouble-makers who are eventually brought to heel. In his prophecy against Moab, Isaiah predicts how:

“…the oppressor will come to an end, and destruction will cease; the aggressor will vanish from the land.” (Isaiah 16:4b)

And there’s a clear moral to our story of Gregory Peck. For if he’d only tried to fit in, and live like the other pheasants in the back garden, he’d have enjoyed a good life of relative ease and comfort. But because of his bad behaviour, he brought about his own downfall, and was banished.

How many of us are guilty of pressing the “self-destruct” button in our own lives? Because of fame or fortune, power or arrogance?  When just a little bit of humility and restraint would have saved us?

All humanity and creation should, officially, be banished from Heaven. That would certainly be the case had Jesus not died on the cross to save us; -to offer us the chance of getting into Heaven.

And the million dollar question is this: Do we have the humility within us to see it and accept it? Or do we choose to ignore, and blindly carry on within our own imperfect groove? Effectively banishing ourselves? Because that’s not how God wants it to be…….

“For God did not appoint us to suffer wrath but to receive salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ.” (Thessalonians 5:9)

#pheasant #gregorypeck