The other day, while I was relaxing in a hammock a few feet from one of our bird feeding stations, a catbird came and entertained me with his antics. I love birdwatching. It’s fascinating and fires up the part of my brain given over to wonder. It is absolutely marvelous to watch a bluebird fly – delicate, almost magical, and completely different from a red-breasted woodpecker, which seems to launch itself hazardously into the air daring gravity to bring it down at every upstroke of its wings. They all swoop in on our feeders – woodpeckers, bluebirds, catbirds, hummingbirds, nuthatches… you get the idea. But we feed them so we can wonder at them. They would be harder to find if we didn’t. God’s feeding station is huge.
I’ve thought about God’s care of the birds and flowers as expressed in Matthew 6 several times – but as we have fed birds for a number of years, I found myself wondering – what would they do without us? By feeding them ourselves are we somehow negating God’s care for them? “Don’t be silly,” I’ve told myself. And it is silly to a point – but the question has led to some interesting and perhaps valuable conclusions….
I believe God loves it when we interact with His creation. He created – our interaction with it is, in many cases, re-creation. When we work in the dirt with our hands or landscape our yard or replant trees along a creek – when we set up feeding stations for birds or create ponds for fish or rescue baby robins (a specialty of my youngest) – we often find ourselves invigorated and God rejoices in that. It’s like parents seeing their children do what they’ve seen mom and dad do a thousand times and the joy parents take in that initiative. I can hear God saying, “I take care of the birds – you want to help? Great! See how I made the juncos to forage on the ground while the hummingbirds suspend themselves in flight to drink flower nectar?…”
We are mistaken if we think this is a distraction – God isn’t into distraction. There is real meaning to it all as God gives us the responsibility to steward wisely what He has made. In this, God is also observing if we care about what He cares about. And, “If that is how He cares for the birds of the air, will He not much more take care of you?” Ah. Let’s pivot here.
I’m not negating God’s care of anything by getting involved in the things He cares about. He is joyously letting me share in the work – and the scope of His work is vast. But homing in on Matthew 6, consider – He takes care of the birds; He makes flowers beautiful; but He cares for us more. So… as a matter of emphasis… if I care about the things God cares about at the intensity He cares about them, there is no way we are going to see someone in need and say, “I wish you well, be warmed and fed” (James 2:16). To those in doubt, we will show mercy and will strive to snatch from the fire those needing salvation (Jude 22-23). And by all of this we will boldly witness to the world the truth of God’s care for us all.
