Birds’ Nests and Coffee Cakes—January 27, 2023

Birds’ Nests and Coffee Cakes—January 27, 2023

“Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice…” (Ephesians 4:31)

As the old saying puts it, you can’t stop the birds from flying over your head, but you don’t have to let them land on your head and make a nest in your hair. That little chestnut of wisdom is so widely known I’ve seen that quotation attributed to everybody from Martin Luther to a Chinese proverb to modern day authors. But regardless of who said it first, it’s true.

And that truth often applied to our thought life, too. That is, you can’t control every thought that pops into your head uninvited, but you can do something to limit how much attention you give to individual thoughts, and how much you let them occupy in your consciousness. You can’t change what is “out there” in the world, but you can decide how much of what is “out there” you are going to allow “in here,” in the inner places of the heart.

I find it’s the same with cupcakes. We had a few mini-pastries left over after a meeting a little while back, and after everyone else had left, they were there on the kitchen counter in the church, calling to me. They said, “Steve, look, let’s just be honest. We’re delicious. And we’re ‘MINI’ pastries, so we hardly count at all as food. Come on, finish us off. We won’t put up a fight.” They made a compelling argument. And for a while, every time I walked into the kitchen, or wandered past on my way somewhere else, I could hear those little coffee cakes calling to me.

You know what made them seem so tempting? They were out. They were sitting there, in plain view, in the little clear plastic tray they came in. They seemed to be crying out to be eaten just because they were easily reachable. We've got other snacks around, too, and there is a grocery store just a couple of blocks away with plenty more food—but I would have had to work harder to get to those. They seemed somehow, out of reach.

Well, eventually, I knew I needed to resolve this, so after one (yes, I had one—are you happy?), I made myself put the rest in the box and the box in the cupboard. Out of sight, out of mind. I wasn’t going to give them any more attention. I didn’t want to—or at least, part of me didn’t want to, and it thought that it could get the better of the other part of me by removing the treats from my view. Once they were out of sight, I didn’t find myself reaching for them for the rest of the day.

Paul’s way of talking about “bitterness and wrath and anger” and the rest seems to work much the same. Paul knows we can’t stop every last thought that might appear in our heads, or check every emotional impulse at the gate before it lights up a synapse in our brains. But… we can decide how much mental space we want to give over to things, and we can decide which kinds of responses and attitudes will be easily within our reach, and which we will have to go to the trouble of opening up a cupboard door to get to them. We can decide where to put the pastries.

Maybe it seems odd to compare bitterness and wrath to coffee cakes, but the more I think about it, the more I see they have in common. They both look like they will be delicious. They both promise they will satisfy with just a bite, only to make you want more once you’ve given in. And they both end up leaving you feeling empty, and yet somehow like there is a lump in the pit of your stomach from having too much of them.

Look, we don’t have to deny that sometimes there is a fiendish enjoyment in feeling bitter or nursing a little bit of envy—you get to make everyone else out to be the enemy, you get to tell yourself that you’re the poor, put-upon, wronged one who hasn’t done a thing wrong but bat your eyelashes, and you get to relish twisting the knife when you retaliate at someone you think has done you wrong. Unleashing wrath, too, can have its moments—it has a way of making people feel powerful, intimidating, and in control when they pick up a dish to throw or make some withering remark to cut some to shreds. So, yeah, it can feel great to indulge in a bit (or a bite?) of wrath, envy, and bitterness. But they are empty calories. And you won’t really be filled.

Paul’s direction to us, then, is quite simple: put those in the cabinet. You can’t necessarily stop ever having the impulse to say something scathingly unkind to get back at someone for what they said to you. But you can take those responses out of easy reach. Put them away. Like they are back in the far corner of the pantry, next to the junk food and the cupcakes and the spices you never use. Put them where they won’t be your go-to responses. And see how it changes you.  

Maybe the way we learn to love like Jesus is to take the things that get in the way of that love and put them out of our reach.

Don’t let anything build a nest in your hair today. Or ever.

Lord of our lives, keep us from weaponizing this day by reaching for harsh words to use against others.