The cuckoo is a common bird in England. The first sign of spring is that bird's call. The cuckoo never builds its own nest. When it feels an egg coming on, it finds another nest with eggs and no parent bird. The cuckoo lands, hurriedly lays its egg, and takes off again. That's all the cuckoo does in terms of parenting. (We have a lot of cuckoos in our society today!)

The thrush, whose nest has now been invaded, comes back, circles, and comes into the wind to land. Not being very good at arithmetic, it can't imagine why it immediately begins to list to starboard. It gets to work hatching the eggs. Four little thrushes and one large cuckoo eventually hatch. The cuckoo is two or three times the size of the thrushes.

Mrs. Thrush, having hatched the five little birds, goes off early in the morning to get the worm. She comes back, circles the nest to see four petite thrush mouths and one cavernous cuckoo mouth. Who gets the worm? The cuckoo.

Guess what happens. The cuckoo gets bigger and bigger; the little thrushes get smaller and smaller.

To find a baby cuckoo in a nest, simply walk along a hedge row until you find little dead thrushes. The cuckoo throws them out one at a time. Here's an adult thrush feeding a baby cuckoo that is three times as big as the thrush.

And the moral of the story is this: you have two natures in one nest and the nature you go on feeding will grow, and the nature you go on starving will diminish. If there's going to be anything resembling that which God has in mind for us, it is going to come not through an annual attempt at the spirit of Christmas but a perpetual recognition of the Spirit of Christ.