I knew about their longstanding argument, but I had never heard them go at it like this before. There in the trees in front of my house the crows and the blue jays were quarreling again. Their war of words and wings had escalated beyond anything I had ever seen.

Then I noticed something I hadn't expected--a pair of huge brown wings making a retreat to a nearby branch. That wasn't a crow! So the commotion wasn't the usual spat between the crows and the blue jays. They had found a common enemy--an owl. Their dislike for each other was lost in a conflict of greater proportions, so they combined forces to meet the threat.

That scene impressed me as being one of nature's striking parallels to a spiritual reality that we as believers in Christ must learn. We have a common enemy, Satan, and he is reason enough to make us forget our differences. That's implied in the fourth chapter of Ephesians, where Paul urged us to put away our personal dislikes, our anger, and our self-centered interests. When we yield to these fleshly impulses, we "give place to the devil" (v.27). And he likes nothing better than to see us fighting with one another--rather than against him.  — Mart De Haan