Look at the Birds of the Air
Typically, I have my next blog in mind the day before I write it and post it. But, yesterday, I had a blank slate and a blank in my head. After a while of looking at notes I had written, still nothing clicked. I prayed for inspiration and rather than ponder, I sat off to my comfy chair in my living area and commenced to read my morning devotions as well as my scriptures from my “One Year Bible”, surely expecting to get an aha for today’s blog. Nada. Zippo. Nothing. Since I’m such an early riser, I was momentarily dozy, so I eased back in my chair and shut my eyes.
A few minutes later, I am wide eyed. I glance up at my TV wall. I see the “birds of the air” metal art piece that I purchased last week. I was shopping for an area rug, found what I wanted and was paying for it at the cashier’s window. That’s when my eyes fell on this flying birds’ wall hanging sitting up behind her desk. I asked about it. She told me a customer had asked them to hold it for her and she would be back to pay for it. She never came. I knew it was meant to be for me – especially when this scripture came to me from Matthew 6:26-27 “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? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?”
Isn’t that just like God — speaking to me in His usual form of illustrative sermons. Jesus did that. In His Sermon on the Mount, He spoke of the birds in the air and the seeds thrown by the wayside and the flowers of the field and the lost sheep. Today He is teaching me about trusting Him to show up instead of worrying, being antsy, being anxious. He is there, right with us when we call on Him. Of course God wanted me to have a daily reminder of His love for me through that birds-of-the-air wall hanging.
In Jesus’ parable about the birds of the air, He says that God is interested in birds, but He is much more interested in us — His special creatures, made in His image and likeness. Further, just as He cares for the lowliest of His creatures, He has a much greater interest in us, as He instructs us to not fear or worry. God will care for us, particularly if we are His dearly beloved children.
Apparently, God is echoing to all of us today to be like the birds of the air. They are living beings and they are just being. Jesus points out that the Lord takes care of the birds during all seasons and through all situations. The lovely thing is that birds know their Creator. They know exactly Who He is. They tend to their work and young every day, accomplishing what they need to do here on earth. They know the Lord will give them exactly what they need when they need it. I don’t know if birds ever want for anything, but they know when their needs are met.
And I’m reminded that God always holds true to meeting my needs — maybe not all my wants, but always my needs. God continues to teach me so much with the birds. He did it again for me today. I am a human being — not a human doing. So I must BE at peace just knowing that in “being”, He is the one Who is “doing” in my life. Are we not much more valuable than birds? Yes, we are—which is why we can be sure the Lord will take care of us during every season we fly or walk through.