Feeding time

How do they know?

The bird feeders hung empty. The driveway was devoid of breadcrumbs, too. I filled them, hung them, scattered breadcrumbs (not from my homemade bread…) and hey, presto! Within a minute the place was jumpin’ with feathered friends tucking into breakfast.

How did the word get out so quickly? Were they all hunkered down nearby, hungrily hoping I might show up and quick to respond when I did? Were they nearly despairing, knowing there was every chance I just might not show up with nuts and seeds? Is there a birdsong frequency I just can’t hear, that put out the call: Food’s up!

I have just come out of the prayer window. God never leaves the spiritual feeders hanging empty. There’s a feast if I take the time with him. There are always crumbs scattered through the day, too, and I can enjoy him if my spiritual antennae are out. He is a faithful God, who never lets us down.

A Singing Father God

‘He will rejoice over you with singing.’ 

I was sitting in the prayer window this morning, enjoying the beauty of the fast-falling golden leaves and noticing that the barer the trees get, the clearer the view. In the profusion of life, vision can be blocked by the lushness of relationships, responsibilities and requirements. Hemmed in – though many of the obstructions are much loved and enjoyed – we can lose sight of what lies beyond. It’s as the leaves begin to drop and the profusion is stripped away, that we can see the view and anticipate the journey.

So Scolty has reappeared, as the Norwegian elm drops her summer attire. And Clach na Ben.

Oops, that was a wee diversion. I was actually going to say that while asking God this morning if I could please hear him singing – wouldn’t it be awesome to hear his voice? Would it be operatic, hip-hop, pop, reggae, chorister?  – I was suddenly aware of the trilling, chirping and chatter of the birds in the larch tree. Singing. Singing.

Sometimes when I ask for the supernatural, I’m answered in the ordinary. The beautiful ordinary becomes extraordinary. My hearing of the birdsong has acquired a new depth, a greater meaning.

He’s rejoicing over you, too.

Survival

Everything is blending into a white mist as the snow drifts out of leaden skies onto grey-green fields. 

The birds hop hopefully round the empty bird feeders, but I can’t get the peanut feeder open to refill it! Their lives may depend on a few peanuts and I can’t get it open.

Will have to pop out and buy another container. Can’t wait til someone returns and opens it for me. 

 The fat pheasant can probably survive but not so sure about those tiny birds. A fine line between survival and death I would imagine.

So important to fill up every morning with the good things of God, so that when we brush up against the spiritually starving, there is something nourishing in us for them to feed on. Otherwise they’ll go look elsewhere and may fill up on junk spirituality.

Dusk

Gloaming, twilight, whatever you call it there is something special about the time when day gives way to night.

Calm and warm tonight so I headed round the old familiar trail. Powering along, thinking only of the big piece of delicious carrot cake I ate at Liz’s today followed by a sliver of date cake made by Joey for my birthday, I was anxious to walk off all those excess calories. I did pause to admire the pocket of primroses nestled in the scrub, then carried on up the incline. 

Something made me pause. The wind tickled the tree tops of the forest of Endor across the marsh. And rising from the darkening woods was a ‘dusk chorus’. I’m not a bird watcher and struggle to identify calls but I’m sure there were at least 8. I can definitely say there were pigeons cooing behind me, and a harmony of intermittent tunes reached my ears. A woodpecker kept an erratic beat going. A startled pheasant called and cried out as it flew low, skimming the gorse and broom. No cuckoo yet. I love it when the cuckoo comes. 

The earth is the Lord’s and everything in it. And what a wonderful earth he has given us to enjoy! 

I carried on, round the corner where bouquets of golden daffodils danced in the breeze. A duck rose from the duck pond. And then back onto the road and headed home but what was that in front? 

A calf. A calf somehow got out of the field and stood nose to nose with other cows, on opposite sides of a gate. He shifted nervously as I cautiously approached. Another walker and his dog came from the other side, trapping the calf in a pincer movement. We both hesitated, shifting carefully forward. I thought I might try to open the gate for him but then he sidled past me and headed down the road. We watched as he re-entered the field further down. 

Chat to the neighbour. Lovely welcome from his wet chocolate lab. Oh, how I miss Dusty ...

The earth is the Lord’s and everything in it. Everything.

What a joy to be alive! What a privilege to live in the country. Thank you, Lord.

Feed Me!

The flock of birds were waiting for a refill on this snowy, below-freezing morning in February. Groundhog day, though that’s another story and not one that is observed in Scotland.

Peanut and grain feeders replenished and an apple cut and placed on the ground, and they resume their task: to eat enough today to stay alive.

As I prayed over our world, I prayed for those in refugee camps. I thought of those people, often without hope, purpose, or vision. I thought of them as they wait like the birds, hoping to be fed today. Nursing grief and anxiety, sorrow and loneliness and fear, living in substandard accommodation and dependent on hand-outs: it is not the way God designed it.

The birds don’t crave dignity and respect. They just focus on eating and staying alive so they can procreate and raise up the next generation to fill our world with beauty and play their part in the fertility of flowers, fruit and so on. 

The refugees must crave many things. Not least a fresh vision of where God fits into their situation. How hard it must be to hang on to faith when all has been swept away. 

There are examples in the Bible of those who did just that, though. Take Job, sorely tried and afflicted but he never turned against God and eventually God spoke to him. There are others, too, who kept their faith in their Lord to deliver, though as Daniel’s friends said, even if God didn’t save them from the fiery furnace they would still worship and trust in him.

How would I do under such severe testing? There’s no knowing. My task today is not to imagine how I would do but to pray for those who are in the testing times now, that our compassionate and loving Lord will deliver them, will feed and clothe and rescue them from the oppressors.

Our hope is built on Jesus Christ, who is faithful.

Feed

Bird feeders hung empty, swinging in the strong winds. Tree branches denuded of the feathered friends who usually flit and dance round the feeders and the fat balls. I’d forgotten to feed them.

The sleet sweeps across the fields and there isn’t much food in the frozen north for these wee birds to eat. I’ve now replenished the feeders and the first birds are back, trying to eat a third of their body weight in order to remain alive through these winter months.

Some of the birds cling to the wire feeder; some perch on the stick perches nibbling at seeds; some hop along the ground gathering up the seed which falls and others peck at the fat balls or the breadcrumbs on the earth.

(The cats are inside!!)

However much they eat in one day, by the next day these creatures need to fill up again.

Much like our spiritual stomachs, which we need to feed daily if we are to stay spiritually alive and able to hear and respond to our Lord’s voice when he guides and directs.

The one who feeds on Jesus will live because of him. Don’t let a day go by where you miss that meal.