If God loves birds THIS much……

July 12, 2025

Maria Creation, Genesis 5, God's protection, God's wisdom, Matthew 10, Safety , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from the will of your Father. Matthew 10:29 Berean Standard Bible

We named him Enoch.  Our little bird for whom we have been praying. He finally left the nest in one of our hanging baskets. Each spring, we suspend two ferns from our upstairs balcony.  The first few years living in this house when bird mommas would select one of our plants to lay her eggs,  I would disassemble the nest’s progress each day. Miserly Maria did not want to sacrifice a large fern!  But the bird parents proved unstoppable and I finally yielded to God’s will.  Now we pray for the eggs and the hatchlings to make it.  We don’t water the ‘chosen’ fern, but just monitor it, knowing we’ll replace it once the little ones launch.

This season, as the hanging basket chosen by a new bird family  grew lighter from no water, occasional strong winds would whip it around. One night during a rainstorm, the unthinkable happened. Mike found the fern on the deck the next morning.  Two naked fledglings had been tossed out, one dead and one still breathing.  He quickly scooped up the survivor, carefully placing him back into the nest. 

We started praying, not knowing if the parents would take care of him.  But they did. And Baby Bird started to grow. More rainy and windy days followed, so we carefully placed a small can of tomato sauce in the nest to give it some weight.

In time Enoch, as we named our survivor later, sprouted wings and started to flutter everytime we came near to water the other hanging fern.  His parents appeared attentive, feeding him regularly.  He seemed to have reached maturity.  But he wasn’t leaving the nest.  Could he have PTSD from having been flung to the ground?  Or was one of his wings broken? 

On Monday of this week, an entire community of sparrows flew around the nest, loudly chirping as if to encourage Baby Bird to try his wings.  We didn’t know what to do.  We kept praying for wisdom. We wanted the One who loves birds to handle this, since He knows them better than we do.

Then yesterday we decided to place the hanging basket on the floor of the balcony and turn it so Baby Bird could look out at the sky and not at our balcony door. Once the basket was on the deck, he was almost head down at an angle, looking like he would fall the two inches out of the nest. There he remained, seemingly paralyzed with fear.

A few hours later, he was no more to be seen.  Mike looked all around the balcony and I checked the ground underneath including in the bushes. Enoch was truly gone.  The Lord had come through! Our baby bird had launched.  

Now you can understand why Mike named him Enoch. Genesis 5:24 describes his namesake: Enoch walked with God, and then he was no more, because God had taken him away.

God really did hear and heed our prayers for this little sparrow. What a beautiful picture of why we can be all the more assured that Jesus hears our prayers and knows exactly what we need. We can confidently rest in the Lord who cares for all His creation, especially those who bear God’s image.

How do you ‘measure’ your day?

February 2, 2023

Maria Creation, God's Glory, God's will , 2 Comments

Two new paradigms came my way in the past week – model for evaluating the day’s activities.

Probably like most people, each morning I jot down a list of tasks, meetings and people to contact that day.  I’ve learned to hold these ‘assignments’ loosely, trusting God’s timing.

As I write this reflection piece, we are prepping to travel down to Florida to visit family.  Getting ready takes time away from my ‘normal’ Monday and Tuesday.  This morning as I thought through the day, I felt some stress mounting.

But then I remembered that I don’t have to measure the day according to ‘what I got done’. 

Yesterday during our church’s annual meeting, Joe reminded us how our church and each of us have already received our life’s purpose. (Older English calls our reason for being or existing our chief end):

“What is the chief end of man? Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy Him forever.” Question 1, The Westminster Shorter Catechism

Joe added that when we pass from this life into the next, our purpose will remain the same.  We will have millennia to glorify and enjoy God.

How’s that for simplicity plus a resounding affirmation of our intentional creation by our supernatural, immaterial, invisible but VERY real God! We have been designed with a purpose, HIS purpose. We are not random accidents.

So, this morning as I tensed a bit looking over my list, the Holy Spirit reminded me, “Maria, your day does not consist in getting things done, checking off your ‘to-do’s’ Remember why I created you!”  I breathed easier.

If that were not enough, the Lord had already gifted me with another larger way to take stock of each day. Last Friday, I read something during my morning meet up with Jesus that prompted this journal entry:

“The most important thing about me is what is immaterial and therefore immortal – my soul!!!”

If that is true, and I believe it is, then shouldn’t I align all I do to support the health and growth of my soul? 

“Maria, what does THAT mean? And how do you relate ‘soul’ work to everyday life?”

I don’t have all that figured out, but I sense this is a seismic shift that has long been coming and for which I feel ready to receive and make the necessary changes in my thinking and thus in my doing.

I will leave you, however, with one particular way to apply these new paradigms of glorifying and enjoying God throughout the day and valuing my eternal soul more than my temporary and decaying body and mind.  If I don’t get to the gym, or pay bills, it’s still a good day if I obeyed Jesus and exercised patience and compassion. I fulfilled part of my purpose in this life, if I handed over all my worries to God and thanked him for everything that he brought my way.

I hope to update you in a couple of months and let you know how the Lord has been changing my daily priorities.

How God used a Daddy Longlegs

August 5, 2021

Maria Creation, Ecclesiastes 3, Romans 8, Sin , , 3 Comments

Creation itself will also be set free from the bondage of decay, into the freedom of the glory of the children of God. Romans 8:21 Berean Study Bible

Each morning during the summer I like to sit out on the back patio to watch the birds, study the day’s Bible passages, pray, journal and read a bit in a theology book.  Right now, I’m savoring my way through John Piper’s Providence.

I love hearing and glancing up at the birds as I soak up early morning beauty. I don’t spend a lot of time watching their playful antics at our birdfeeder. I simply appreciate sharing the morning hour with them. But this morning at one point, not a bird, but an insect caught my attention and I became fixated.  A struggling Daddy Longlegs spider was nursing one of her eight legs which didn’t seem to working right.  She was trying to move closer to one of our plants, but kept falling over and resting.  Had she suffered a stroke, or broken a leg? Was she old? I couldn’t move my eyes off of her persevering move-and-rest struggle.

My eyes suddenly filled with tears.  Startled, I asked myself ‘What is going on?’ I’m not often moved to tears. But when something goes right to my heart, tears signal a deep feeling that I dare not ignore.

The Holy Spirit wordlessly whispered and I journaled: ‘Don’t you want to live in a world where no one and not a single living thing dies?  Where insects, birds, animals, flowers, trees, people flourish forever?’  Of course, I do.  I thought of the local pregnancy resource center where I volunteer.  Each of our appointments with gals who find themselves pregnant give us an opportunity to share the Good News of Jesus Christ.  I feel nervous sometimes and pray for a way to gently lead a gal into a conversation.  But this morning, I thought: ‘Why am I afraid to ask people that very question prompted by observing a handicapped spider? Afterall, God has wired all of his image bearers to protest death.

Don’t we struggle to let go of our beloved, aging pets?  Why do we shrink back from the ravages of disease or even old age in those whom we love?  Because it’s not supposed to be this way. We know that.  Even secularists feel this. 

Think about what drives the ‘health space’ here in America, where one can find fitness training programs, multitudes of supplements to buy and eating plans promoted with religious fervor. Engineers playing with artificial intelligence also come to mind. I don’t know a lot, but I hear enough about well-financed research projects to extend human life span, or clone versions of one self. None of this is new.  Weren’t we taught in our history classes that Ponce de Leon explored the new world, partly motivated to locate a fountain of youth?

Back to Mr. or Mrs. Daddy Longlegs who by the way, per Wikipedia live longer than I would have imagined such a fragile being could endure, 1 year for males and up to 3 years for females.  What brought me to tears is what the writer of Ecclesiastes 3:11 penned, ‘He has planted eternity in the human heart’ (NLT)

I pray that the next time someone brings up an aging and infirm person or beloved pet or even if someone laments the harm done to trees and baby seals, I pray that I gently ask them my Holy Spirit-inspired question:

  • Don’t you want to live in a world where no one nor any living thing dies? Yes? Then let me tell you how. That kind of world depends on one person, whose name is Jesus.

Friends, we have good news of a coming new and forever creation, where all will be made beautiful and meant to last. It’ll be better than Eden because we won’t be able to harm anyone or anything.  Finally freed from our sin because of Jesus, we will joyfully enjoy God, one another and the rest of the created world.