Last night in our small group, one person was talking about a huge hawk they had encountered in their back yard.  We had a similar situation months ago, but the hawk no longer came into our back yard.  Our dog Monte hated this hawk and went crazy when this hawk would come and sit on a limb and caw and caw at him.  We began to focus on other topics and never thought a thing about it.

Until this morning.  I was in the kitchen making a cup of coffee and Monty started going crazy again at the sliding glass door.  I let him out and he went straight for the back fence where two of these birds were sitting.

Needless to say, they flew away but he continued to bark for a few minutes.  He and I had thought that they no longer came into his yard to bother him.  It had been months since their last visit.  Yet this morning they came back to bug him.  No, not to bug him but to antagonize him.

Isn’t that similar to what happens to us.  We have a problem in our lives that we seek to remove from our lives and seem to gain victory and move on.  Then one day, out of the blue, it surfaces again in our lives and we experience the same reaction we had to it months earlier.  The hawk in our life could take various forms.  Alcohol.  Pornography.  An irritating person.  A fetish.  Bad habit.  Reactions we have to other people we don’t  like.  A qualitiy that we have tried to cut out in our lives that resurfaces.  We all have hawks that come to distort healthy thinking and living.

Jesus talked about this problem in John 10:10 where he says that a thief comes to steal, kill and destroy.  The hawk destroyed Monty’s calm demeanor this morning and our hawks come to alter the principles that God wants us to follow.  If we stop our focus and dwell on this concept, we will always experience hawks that take our attention away from our greatest purpose in life.

As you read the rest of John 10:10, Jesus responds to this dilemma by saying, “. . .but I have come that you might have life and have it abundantly.”  We have a choice to focus on the God that has come to bring us an abundant life.  The hawk or the Lord.  My choice.

Monty is a dog and operates instinctually.  He sees the hawk and he reacts instinctually.  We are humans and we have been given a choice of whether to focus on the temptations of life, or on the one who wants to give us life and give it abundantly

On this journey I know that hawks fly around me on a regular basis, but I am choosing to focus on the One who has the power to transform my mind and perspective and urge you this day to do the same.