Consider the Birds

We feed birds at our house. Have for years. Lately, I have been thinking about these birds as well as feeding them and watching them.

First, they are marvelous little creatures. What I have found somewhat perplexing is that these birds have no awareness of the fact that I am feeding them. I go to the feed store and buy the 50# bags of seed. I go to the garage and get one of the five gallon buckets I store the seed in, carry it to the feeders, and refill them when needed. The birds are apparently clueless that they have someone looking out for them - me.

I know that I can’t expect these birds to thank me. If I could make one request, however, it would be this: "After you have eaten the nice food I put out for you, please don’t go sit on the branches of that tree over my car and relieve yourself." Seems like the least they could do.

As long as I have been feeding the birds in our neighborhood, I do wish they would recognize me as a friend, not a threat. Every time I walk around the corner of the house where the feeders are, they fly off. Sometimes I talk to them as they fly away. I say, “Don’t you know that I am the one who put the feeder there, the one who puts those delicious seeds in it? You don’t need to fly away!” They, of course, never get it.

God has been speaking to me lately in these experiences. It goes something like this: “You don’t get it, either, son. I take care of you and the birds. Are you not as oblivious to my provision at times as they are of yours?”

The Spirit brought to my mind these words of Jesus recently, too: “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?” (MT 6:25-27 emphasis mine).

In this day of economic uncertainty, I am choosing to “look at the birds”, remember that they are not sweating where their next meal is coming from or how they will make it through their remaining years. I am choosing to believe that I am “much more valuable” than those birds are to my heavenly Father. Want to join me?