Guinea Fowl attack!!! A lesson in beating yourself up.

This weekend I heard the familiar tap-tap tap on my windows that torments us at this time every year. Every year we have an unwelcome visitor who runs up and down outside our house tapping on all the glass doors. Every time I chase them they run like mad, but in half an hour or so will be back doing it again – tap-tap tap-tap. Our guest is a Guinea Fowl who seems irritability drawn to try and peck his reflection in the glass. Even if you jump out at him and chase him the windows are like a magnet lure to him back again. I don’t know if he sees a handsome rival who may be after his mate. (I imagine his mate, who is sometimes watching, is laughing at his bravado). Whatever he sees he doesn’t like it and he is compelled to attack, even though all he receives in the end is a very sore head. Thankfully it is usually at me at home when it happens as Ramos has reminisced more than once about how good Guinea Fowl can taste!

Why does he keep doing it? Surely he realises that he gains nothing except pain from it? We often do the same to ourselves – looking at ourselves and not liking what we see. Often we don’t need other people to bring us down, we are sometimes our own worst critics. How often have you asked God what he sees in you, like the Psalmist did?

Psalms 8:3-4 I look up at your macro-skies, dark and enormous, your handmade sky-jewelry, Moon and stars mounted in their settings. 4 Then I look at my micro-self and wonder, Why do you bother with us? Why take a second look our way? (Message)

Yet, whilst we are stuck looking at the reflection of ourselves that we don’t like, with our sin and bad habits on display, God sees us differently. He sees us with all our potential and that we are a work in progress:

2 Corinthians 3:18 And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.

So give yourself a break – stop attacking yourself. Accept that God says you are fearfully and wonderfully made and that you are a work in progress being transformed daily.