A matter of life and death
This picture is of an oyster catcher chasing away a crow. Crows predate the eggs and chicks of birds, so for the oyster catcher this skirmish is serious: it’s a matter of life and death. Ground nesting birds like oyster catchers are particularly vulnerable to predation: I read an account recently of a goshawk taking the nearly full grown chick of another oyster catcher at one of my local sites. On that occasion the parent bird didn’t manage to chase away the predator. In the natural world the battle between predator and prey is always a matter of life and death: there is no in between layer. How different it is for us. We have so many layers of protection, whether it is our insurance policies, our security cameras, our fancy doorbells that tell us who’s outside, health, police and emergency services – the list goes on. Rarely is a potential threat immediately threatening. Or is it?

The Unseen World
While on holiday recently, I went snorkelling. Above the water, nothing of the undersea world was visible. However the hotel had made snorkelling equipment freely available to residents, and as soon as I put on my mask and flippers I saw a different reality: the reef below me was alive with a myriad of darting fish and other colourful creatures, waving weeds, canyons, mountains, sand, stones, and seashells. The small fishes were flashing away because they were constantly wary of potential threats. In some of the crevices lurked sea urchins of different sizes; their poisonous spines waiting for an unsuspecting touch from any passing creature, or indeed from my flailing hands. When I took off the snorkelling equipment and went back to my sun lounger, I was struck not only by the natural beauty that I had just witnessed, but also of the reality of an unseen world below the water’s surface that is both beautiful and dangerous, and how we live much of the time on the surface of life, completely blind to the present reality and imminent dangers of the unseen world of the spiritual dimension.

The Prowling Predator
 Yet, like the oystercatcher, we have a predator. As Peter writes, “your enemy, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion seeking whom he made devour.“ (1 Peter 5:8) Paul writes  that we “wrestle… with the spiritual hosts of wickedness in heavenly places.” (Eph 6:12) Jesus tells us that “The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy.” (John 10:10) Because of the prowling predator, Peter warns us to “be sober, be vigilant.“ In other words, we are to keep our heads clear and our eyes open, because we don’t know where the next attack is coming from. The word Peter uses here for being vigilant is gregoreo, and it is particularly significant for Peter. It was He who was sleeping, along with James and John, in the garden of Gethsemane when they were there with Jesus just before his betrayal. Jesus said to him: “What, could you not gregoreo with me just for one hour? Gregoreo and pray, less you enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.“ (Matthew 26: 40–41). We all know how the flesh failed Peter when Jesus was on trial, so his exhortation to vigilance was written with feeling. But by the time Peter was writing his letters, he also knew that God has made spiritual mask and flippers – the gifts of the Holy Spirit – freely available to the church to help us keep our eyes open underwater.

For want of a nail…
What we need to remember is that the devil plays the long game. There is a proverb, often attributed to Benjamin Franklin, that goes: “For want of a nail the shoe was lost, for want of a shoe the horse was lost, for want of a horse that rider was lost for want of a rider the battle was lost, for want of a battle the kingdom was lost, and all for the want of a horseshoe nail.” As a rule, the spiritual hosts of wickedness are not waiting round the corner with an axe to take us out at one fell swoop: they are more likely to tempt our flesh into negligence of a horseshoe nail so that we fall all by ourselves while they are busy tempting others. How often we say, “Oh that won’t matter…“ And then we find out further down the road that it really did matter, a lot.  The little thought that we were ignoring was actually the Holy Spirit showing us where the enemy had loosened a nail.

Ultimately, we know that the kingdom is the Lord’s, and that no amount of lost nails will compromise the final outcome of the victory that He has already won on the cross. But if we will keep our eyes open to the unseen spiritual realm we can avoid the lurking sea urchins that would take us out of the battle, temporarily or permanently, even though the final outcome will not be affected.