The Birds Do Not Bother Me
When I am trying to write, or otherwise trying to concentrate, I am never bothered by the sound of birds chirping outside my window. People talking or power tools roaring would bother me. Not birds.
They are “nature.” Somehow, that is part of the reason they get a pass. But there is also this: In the gospels, Jesus specifically cites birds as a metaphor for the fineness and precision of God’s care. He does this multiple times. I have read the gospels enough times and encountered this analogy frequently enough that the connection has seeped into the way I think about birds.
Just how much God the Creator must see and know is part of what is so unfathomable about creation. I wrote about this in Ariel, my ebook about our solar system. (About my books.) There are planets we do not imagine because astronomers have not yet detected them, let alone named them. And on these planets, there is seismic and thermal activity. There is shattering rock and the movement of fluids from temperature change. The Creator drives this activity of creation as much as he drives any other. God is present there, at work there, and witness to it all.
In the gospels, as I say, Jesus brings attention to birds to illustrate this point. In the Sermon on the Mount, he says:
“Look at the birds of the sky: They don’t sow or reap or gather into barns, yet your heavenly father feeds them. Aren’t you worth more than they?” —Matthew 6:26
Later he says:
“Aren’t two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them falls to the ground without your father’s consent.” —Matthew 10:29
These are lines of which I am reminded when I hear birds sing. To hear a bird is to hear a creature whose life is completely known to God—a creature who finds its food because of God’s will for that particular bird in that moment.
As Jesus went on to say after the second of the statements above:
“So don’t be afraid, therefore. You are worth more than many sparrows.” —Matthew 10:31
That bird I hear is fully seen by God, and I am seen the same way.
The bird’s song is a direct reminder of the fullness of God’s presence and provision. He is with me: the author of the moment I am experiencing and the One who is experiencing it with me.
How should I feel, therefore, when the bird shits upon my car window?
(This, too, presumably fell with my father’s consent.)
Glory From Above
I have experienced only one moment in my life, just one, when a bird shit directly onto me. Given how much gets on my car, it is a little surprising to me I have not been personally struck in this way more than once. Just finding it on the car can be irksome enough. Here, the sense that the bird gets a pass for being “nature” reaches its limit—despite the obvious naturalness of the event.
And yet, once the revulsion and annoyance can be set aside, the fineness of God’s care can be seen even more minutely in this encounter.
Behold the fineness:
This event, evidenced in what has landed on my car or on me, is an outcome of the bird’s digestion. That digestion is a process, but also a consequence of still smaller creatures: microorganisms in the bird’s gut. Successful digestion (with this evidence of success) means that not only is the bird being provided for, but its bacteria are being provided for as well. The focal point of all that God cares for is dialed in this minutely. Even the nameless, unseen bacterium in the gut of a nameless, unseen bird is a created individual, worthy of the attention of the Creator.
I could never think of that bacterium except for this thought exercise. Yet that creature was never lost or forgotten to God.
Meeting a Person
Imagine, therefore, what it means to meet a person. Imagine what it means to meet a human being.
A human is a being not only of nature, but also of spirit. A human, any individual human who might come into our awareness, is a being for whom a vast amount of attention is being lavished by God the Creator, because of the complexity of this person’s inner life and struggle compared to the bacterium and the bird.
How much different is God’s care for a person, and in what way is it different? Jesus reveals this as well. He goes beyond birds to do so, offering other analogies in parables. He offers the picture of a shepherd with 100 sheep who loses just one of them, and asks:
“What man among you … does not leave the 99 in the open field and go after the lost one until he finds it? When he has found it, he joyfully puts it on his shoulders, and coming home, he calls his friends and neighbors together, saying to them, ‘Rejoice with me, because I have found my lost sheep!’” —Luke 15:4-6
He offers the picture of a woman with ten silver coins who loses one, saying:
“If she loses one coin, does [she] not light a lamp, sweep the house, and search carefully until she finds it? When she finds it, she calls her friends and neighbors together, saying, ‘Rejoice with me, because I have found the silver coin I lost!’” —Luke 15:8-9
How is God’s care different where we are concerned? It differs in our capacity to disavow or disregard that care. Unlike the birds, we are able to proceed as though we are not known or seen.
We chirp, we sing, we fly. In our human analogies, we regard birds as symbols of freedom—“free as a bird”—yet we are far freer than they. In our thoughts, we possess abundant capacity to construct the earth and sky as we imagine them, and soar over them as their ruler. God knows us, but in the ways we see things, we need not know him. He sees us, yet we do not have to bother even to look to him. And somehow, this very freedom is divinely special, a precondition of the Creator’s emotion.
That is, it gives God joy to draw us back to him, to let us know we are known, to give us the eyes to see that we are seen.
We make noise within these lives. We foul things. Yet the Creator is not bothered. He turns it to good. Just how much the Creator must see and know is unfathomable—it even includes what is to come, what he will do. That which we say and think and do, and the ways we fail: He is with us for all of it, and to him it is a prelude to rejoicing.
Photo: “Sure Sign of Spring - Robin - Bird” by Barbara Miers