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BACKGROUND
No Background on Fairy Tales!
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Online links to scriptures (New International Version [NIV] unless otherwise stated) are shown in blue
| UP THE MOUNTAIN
Part 2 |
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| INTERPRETATION |
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To make understanding easier and quicker, a brief summary interpretation is given here. Please take the time to consider the many detailed spiritual meanings and messages contained within each section. The story was given by the Lord first, the interpretation after the ‘fairy tale’ was completed!
PART 1
The Dream: The witness of others into our life.
The Journey: Making the decision for Christ.
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 PART 2
‘Tweet Tweet’: Fulfilment of the Feast of Passover, as reflected in the Traditional/Evangelical Church
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 ‘Coo Coo’: Fulfilment of the Feast of Pentecost, as reflected in the Pentecostal/Charismatic Church
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| ‘TWEET TWEET’ |
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 John was more excited than he had ever been in his whole life! Caused him to jump up and down with great glee! Hopped higher than he had ever managed before. That’s funny he thought. Must be the adrenaline!
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 He turned round and looked at the trees. “Boy o boy, they seem massive!” He looked and he looked and he looked again. But his focus of attention was not now on the trees but a lot closer, to his face in fact. Before his very eyes, his nose was growing longer and longer and longer and joining up with his mouth! “Must be hallucinating,” he squawks to himself. “All the excitement you know.” So he waved his arms round in a circle, to relax his body and brain. “Hey, something’s not right here,” he thought to himself. “I feel as free as a bird on the breeze. Wait a minute! I am a bird on the breeze! And I am about to hit that……” Thud! John’s world suddenly went black. Gingerly, he woke up, as if from a dream. “What’s happened? Surely not! It can’t be! It can’t …. b-b-be! B-b-but it is! I am a bird! A sparrow, even! What has become of me! Grandma never told me about this!” John looked for his rushsack but it had gone. No more jellypeas he said sadly to himself. (For no one had yet had the brilliant marketing idea of trebling their size and changing them into a bean shape, selling for four times the price! An idea that turned this ‘has bean’ ‘sweet pea’, into one of the world’s sweetest, succulent success stories!)
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 “Well, I guess I had better make the best of it,” he thought sparrowfully. Flapping his new found wings he yawed his way up into the tree that had so rudely stepped out into the path of his first flight! After a perfect two foot landing on a high branch, a fine chirpiness feeling nested over him. “This is a birds eye view,” he exclaimed. “Well, it is for us sparrows,” said a chipper voice next to him. John looked around and there was this very nice lady sparrow, twirling her beak in a classic sparrow smile. “Welcome to the mountain,” she said sweetly. “Can I take you under my wing, metaphorically speaking of course!” she said blushingly, embarrassed by her little joke. “What a good idea,” John replied, “For this is all very strange to me.” “By the way, my name is Jill,” said Jill. “And mine is John,” said John, pleased to have the introductions done with. For he wasn’t too practised in introductions to beautiful ‘birds’ of the opposite sex!
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 So Jill winged John on a guided tour of the mountain. He really enjoyed the freedom of flying, being able to get from point to point, ‘as the sparrow flies.’ “Flying is certainly easier than climbing,” he thought to himself. Jill was obviously really at home. “There are two groups of us here” she informed John tweetingly. “The Sparrowditionalists, who have been here the longest and the Sparrangelicals, real enthusiasts for the Guide and his River of Blood.” Jill introduced him to many of her friends, about whom she talked freely. “Gossip, his grandmother would have called it,” thought John to himself. “But they all seem happy enough playing around, twittering from tree to tree, enjoying the sunshine filtering through the trees of the foothills in which they live.”
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 As they flew round John was feeling a little peckish but could find nothing to peck! He so wanted to try out his newfound beak too. Had noticed that all the trees were in blossom but there was no fruit anywhere to be seen. Finally, plucking up the courage, John asked Jill where they could get a bite to eat. “Oh that’s simple,” she tweeted, preening her feathers, “We have a field of barley over here. We can eat as much of it as we want. It’s not great food but there is plenty of it and we are happy enough, although more variety would be nice for a change. My friends often complain about it, but they are not prepared to look elsewhere either. Some people are never satisfied, are they! Let me take you there.” So Jill and John went to the barley field and joined thousands of other sparrows pecking their lunch. “Plenty of it,” John thought to himself once again, for he didn’t want to offend the beautiful Jill, “but it isn’t anything like the magnificent feasts Grandma used to tell me about. And those trees are strange. Always in blossom! But never producing fruit!”
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 John pondered all this inside his bird brain, which being sparrow sized, took time to compute. But unlike the sparrowbrains around him, he quickly became dissatisfied with his lot. Plucking up his courage, once again, (won’t have many feathers left soon!) he asked Jill if this is all there is to the mountain. Jill was not really surprised when he asked, for she was getting to know him a little by now. “I hoped you weren’t going to ask,” she said sadly, for she knew she was about to lose her friend. “You really do want to fly higher up the mountain, don’t you. Sometimes I dream of flying higher too. To be really honest though, life is very comfortable down here in the foothills. But I have seen that dream in your wistful sparrow eyes for a while now, and know that you won’t be happy until you give it a go. Remember our Guide at the gate telling you about a friend inside? Well, I have always been sceptical about him, but others say that he holds the key to flying high. So you’d better ask him. I’ll say my goodbyes now, for when you go away I won’t see you again.” Jill cried sporrowfully, gentle sparrow tears rolling fetchingly down her delicate beak. “And I was becoming fond of you too,” she twittered with a birdie blush, before disappearing into the sunset as all true, jilted heroine sparrows do. John was sad to see her go, but he had a greater purpose in life – to climb the mountain.
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| ‘COO COO’ |
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 “I just don’t see how I can fly high,” he mused, totally bemused, “for my wings only lift me to the treetops, not the mountaintop!” For a quick lesson in sparrodynamics, he had taken. “This will be a good test for my Friend Inside. I feel pretty stupid talking to someone I can’t see, but I really do want to go higher and I have run out of ideas myself.” Looking round to make sure no one else was watching, John said in his best bird thought, “Friend Inside, please tell me how I can climb further up this mountain.” “You want to discover the wonders your Grandma told you about when you sat on her knee?” a gentle voice replied. John was so surprised he did a springsault (for summer had not yet come) right there on the spot! “You too! How is it that you know so much about me? Like my Guide!” he squeaked. “We both knew you before you were even born,” his newfound friend said gently. Not wanting to get involved in a deep theological discussion about the origin of bird life, John accepted that his friend knew what he was talking about and queried again, “You know how to climb this mountain?” “Yes John, I do. If you let me, I can guide you right to the top.” “Can we go now, please,” John cooed in a most unsparrowlike manner. “That’s a funny voice I have! I am growing too, and my feathers are turning white! What’s happening? I like this! I’ll hop over to the ‘looking pool’ and see my reflection in the water!” “No need to, John, for I can tell you that you have been transformed into a dove. You have been prepared to trust me, so now are taking on my image. Spread your wings and enjoy yourself! Fly high, fly on up the mountain!” So John did. Now bigger and stronger, he effortlessly winged his way over the treetops, up onto the mountain itself.
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 Jill looked on from far below, a tear welling in her misty eye. “Farewell John, I wish I was as brave as you but I am so comfortable here. I just can’t make the break. Maybe one day. Maybe……” John didn’t hear for he was already flying high above the trees, delighted with the flapping power of his new wings. Up, up and away. He would get to the top of the mountain now! He climbed and climbed, so happy that he had now made it! But soon, feeling tired from exertion and excitement, he spotted a group of doves feeding. Thought he would join them for a well-earned rest and refreshments. He landed, again in a perfect two-point landing, feeling proud of himself for how far he had come. The other doves welcomed him warmly. They were so much more outgoing than the sparrows, although he soon observed that they were also expert at pecking each other too, when one got in another’s way! But there was even more food here, and it was tender wheat, rather than the tough old barley of his sparrow diet. “Jill doesn’t know what she’s missing,” John thought fleetingly. “But it’s her choice.” So reinvigorated after a good feed, he decided to take a look around.
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 There was just a different atmosphere about this place. Not as many doves as there were sparrows but they made so much more noise! So enthusiastic they generally were about life too. Oh yes, there was the odd reclusive bird. Suffering from something called ‘spiritual dovpression’ the others said. But most happily perched on the local tree branches, cooing about the good life. Noticing green fruit on the trees, John asked his dovecostal friends when the fruit ripened. “We don’t know,” they said in a chorus. Then each promoted a different theory in a hubbub of noise. But suddenly, there was silence. John looked skyward with the others to see why. For up there, a flock of jet black vultures wheeled around, seeking prey. Several careless doves were not quick enough at getting under cover and were caught in the vultures’ trap. The vultures chased them relentlessly until their resistance caved in. They just lay down and died of fright. Dead doves - vulture food! It was so sad to see. He observed the battle of wits going on between the doves and the vultures. Like psychological warfare between two opposing armies. The doves would squawk at the vultures, most undovelike really, and the vultures would counter with their own blood curdling screeching laugh, that harbinger of death so feared by countless generations of desert dwellers. A contest of intimidation. A contest of wills. A phoney, yet ever so real war.
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 Now John wasn’t just a lovey dovey, but really a most astute bird, for he remembered from his plains’ days that vultures only fed on the dead. “Why then, did the doves fear them?” He shared his thoughts with his fellow doves, encouraging them to call the vultures’ bluff! “We’re going to come out of the bush and exert our authority,” he cried out to his mates encouragingly. “Remember, ‘a bird in the battle is worth more than two thousand in the bush!’ The vultures are already defeated! We will call their bluff!” Some decided that John was right, while the majority, as usual in such matters, thought, “He doven’t know what he is talking about,” or, “the vultures will kill us.” Or again with dove-like caution, “we will wait and see how he gets on, before risking losing our beautiful white feathers in the battle.” Much like the sparrows,” John thought to himself. “Enjoying what they have, but not prepared to risk home comforts to fly higher up the mountain. While this place is great, I know there is more, for I haven’t yet experienced all that my Grandma told me about those many years ago, when sitting on her knee. Well padded, comfortable, ‘Grandma knees’ they were too! Memories, memories!”
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 So John took his small intrepid band of dynamic doves out to face the vociferous vultures. The vociferous vultures circled above, vigorously vociferating, then dive bombed the dynamic doves. The dynamic doves responded by flying, feathers flapping furiously, fighting fear, up in the air as one, to do battle! They were perfectly dovetailed, one to the other.
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 The voracious, viscous, vocal voices of the villainous, verbose vultures, vaporised vacuously, as the wall of pure white, dovetailed doves rose to meet them! Then the vanquished vultures voluntarily vanished! For they knew that their bluff had been called, that their hold over the doves had been broken.
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 Some of the watching doves flapped their wings vigorously in appreciation before flying off to join their victorious friends. Many others however, didn’t know quite what to do, now that the vultures had, temporarily at least, vacated the area. In fact, in their heart of hearts, they really yearned for the vultures’ return. For they were actually more comfortable with the enemy being there! Some doves you just cannot please!
John was philosophical about all this, as he used his birdbrain to mull over the day’s happenings. “Didn’t happen like this with the sparrows,” John thought to himself. “That was because the sparrows were not large enough to interest the vultures,” John heard a voice from nowhere reply. Then he realised that the pearl of wisdom had come from his Friend Inside, whom, he had to admit, he had temporarily forgotten, in the midst of the excitement. “Perhaps he can also explain this phoney war,” John thought to himself. “Yes I can.” John’s feathers underwent a rapidly ruffling reaction, now fully understanding that his Friend Inside could hear everything he was thinking. “That’s okay then,” he thought with relief, preening himself back to normality. “This place is certainly different to the one I grew up in. But I wasn’t a bird in those days either! This mountain is surely a world apart.” Yes, John was at last starting to attain a ‘bird’s eye view’ of the world.
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| <i>NEXT WEEK</i>
UP THE MOUNTAIN
Part 3 of 4 |
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 Now we are getting to the heart of the matter. For God today, is calling out those who have a real heart for Him. The eagles. Those who will respond to His trumpet call.
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| A NOTE FROM DAVID |
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 Many Christians are more than happy simply to stay on the plains, to stick with their original salvation experience, not desiring any more. Many others will be comfortable in the foothills of the infilling of the Holy Spirit. But there is yet more, as we will see next week. Join us then!
SEA OF GALILEE CLIMATE AND LIFE
Several hot mineral springs surround the Sea of Galilee. The largest of these springs is located near the ancient capital city of Tiberias, where Herod Antipas once included it in his hot baths. The number of sick people mentioned in the vicinity of the sea (see Matt. 14:35—36) may be due in part to the hot mineral springs and public baths in the area.
When these springs and baths did not provide cures, people sought the Rabbi from Capernaum, who had a reputation for being able to heal. Ten of Jesus’ thirty-tree recorded miracles—including a majority of his healing miracles—happened near the lake.
The Sea of Galilee contains fresh water. It is fed primarily by the Jordan River from the north and several wadis on the east that carry rain and melted snow from the Golan Heights.
Just as it does today, the Sea of Galilee teemed with fish in Jesus’ time. There was a prosperous commercial fishing industry in the many small villages and larger towns along its shore. Among these was Bethsaida, which means “house of fishermen.” Jesus’ choice of this location for his ministry, along with his selection of several fishermen as his disciples, made fishing imagery a natural illustration for some of his teachings (Matt. 4:19).
The climate of Galilee is quite tropical, with fertile soil. The most productive areas surround the sea. In Jesus’ time, wheat, barley, figs, grapes, and olives were produced in large quantities. The fertile fields often gave Jesus opportunities to illustrate his teaching (Matt. 12:1; 13:1—43; John 12:24). Jesus’ messages about wealth and earthly treasures were easily understood by the inhabitants of the prosperous lake communities ( Matt. 6:19—21; 16:26; Luke 12:16—21).
Source: http://www.followtherabbi.com
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So until next week.......
MAY GOD BLESS YOU AND YOU BLESS GOD!
His servant and yours
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A DAVID'S DOODLING
484. The foolish person lusts after instant pleasure, the wise man seeks knowledge, but the godly man yearns for God's truth.
David Tait
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Check
out the WWJ website for….
More David's Doodlings: www.wwj.org.nz/dd.php
PGIM! Weekly Encouragement Ezine : http://www.wwj.org.nz/wwword.php
Reports on past Ministry visits: http://www.wwj.org.nz/diary.php
Eagles Fly High!: http://www.wwj.org.nz/eagle.php
Eagles Fly High! (Pastors, Teachers and Students): http://www.wwj.org.nz/eaglepts.php
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