Impurity

Recently Blue-winged Warblers have returned to their breeding grounds. I’ve been hearing their two-part “bee-buzzzzz” song in a number of places around town. Each time I hear the song I make an effort to see the bird on the off chance that it is not a Blue-winged Warbler. The reason being that sometimes the closely related Golden-winged Warbler will sing the same song. The reverse can also be the case. Unfortunately it is usually safe to assume that whatever song one hears, it is a Blue-winged Warbler singing it, as Golden-winged Warblers are in the decline and may in fact be heading toward extinction. Curiously, the reason Golden-winged Warblers are disappearing is completely natural; they are being bred out of existence by the Blue-winged Warblers. Hybrids between the two species are common enough that they are named and depicted in field guides. These Lawrence’s and Brewster’s Warblers are capable of reproduction and Blue-winged Warbler genes are winning the battle.

With the mixing of the gene pool it is becoming increasingly difficult to find a pure Golden-winged Warbler. And once the impurity works its way in, purity can never be achieved again. Think about it, 99 and 44/100% pure is still impure. Picture a single drop of food coloring in a glass of water, once it goes in it spreads throughout the whole glass eventually. And isn’t it especially true that most of the time motives are something less than pure? This past week, one reason I was checking out the songs of warblers was that I wanted to attempt what is called, in birding parlance, a Century Run. That is, I wanted to locate 100 species of birds within Brimfield in a single 24 hour day. My motivation for this quixotic quest was similar to what long distance runners or mountain climbers have: the thrill of the chase and the satisfaction of personal achievement. Or at least that was part of my motivation. Truth be told, I was also highly motivated by competition. Last week, while I was competing in another birding marathon, the World Series of Birding (where my team broke its own record finishing ninth with 191 species), three local birders attempted a Brimfield Century Run. They fell short by four species. I was determined to beat that. In the end I ended up two species shy of their mark.

So what can be done about impurity? Can any of us ever have pure motives, even when we set out to do good? Honestly, I don’t think that we can ever make such claims as perfection is simply beyond our human capacity. Fortunately, God has a plan to deal with our impurities. Unfortunately, we won’t like it. A number of scriptural passages describe trials and tribulations as God’s way of refining us. The metaphor refers to the act of refining precious metals by melting them, removing the impurities that rise to the surface (known as dross), and then repeating again and again until the metal is pure. So we should expect to face troubles if we want to be the person God wants us to be. The wonderful truth about this process is that through it we reflect more and more of God. For you see, the way a refiner knows when a metal is finally pure is when he can see his reflection in it.