I had a conversation with a bird last week. I’m not Dr. Dolittle, although my wife calls me that sometimes when it comes to doing housework.
I asked, “Mr. Bird, why are you singing so much?”
He said, “It’s springtime, don’t you know?”
I said, “Yes, but people are sick. Some are dying. The economy is bad. There is no March Madness. Children want to go to school, but they can’t. I can’t play with my granddaughter.”
The bird chirped back that all of that sounded terrible, but why should he stop singing?
I said, “Well, my feathered friend. I think people are going to put you way down on their priority list. No one is rushing out to buy birdseed these days. Only toilet paper and canned goods.”
“Tweetle Dee,” said the bird. “Birdseed makes us lazy anyway. Haven’t you heard that long ago Jesus made us the focus of one of his parables?”
“Look at us,” he said.
“We do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet the Heavenly Father feeds us.”
“I appreciate your birdseed,” said the bird.
“God uses you to feed us. But if not you, then our food will come from somewhere else. It always has. It always will.”
Then the bird flew away.
And I thought about what the bird said. I wondered how I could have a song in my heart like the bird, but I’m worried about so much right now.
A little later, the bird came back. He had something in his beak. I took it from him and noticed that it was two blades of grass that were formed into a cross.
The bird asked, “Have you heard the story of Jesus giving his life for the birds.”
I said, “No, I don’t think I’ve heard that story. I have heard the story of Jesus giving his life for people, but not for birds.”
The bird said, “Good. Then you need to remember that. Jesus said that you are much more valuable to him than us birds. If he takes care of us, how much more will he take care of you? When you hear us sing, you should remember that,” said the bird.
“And I thought you sang just to attract a mate,” I said.
My feathered friend flew up and caught a bug in midflight, and then he came back to his perch.
He said, “We sing because we don’t worry. We sing because we have faith that the One who created us is going to take care of us. We sing because the Creator once asked, ‘Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?'”
I was just about to ask if that meant that hummingbirds worry a lot, but he flew away I never saw him again.
Photo Credit: searchengineland.com