“Be still and know that I am God . . .” (Ps. 46:10a)
Recently I was blessed with the privilege of caring for my family’s 13 birds. Since this was my first experience with such a lot of them, and since one of their birds had died the previous year under the care of a friend, I was somewhat worried that I would do something wrong and those little bits of feathers wouldn’t survive my “care”.
I was left with detailed instructions as to what, where, how and when to feed them, how to ready them for the night, etc., but I was told that they would enjoy some ‘out of cage’ activity, too. Now I have two 4-legged furry friends that live with me – the kind you don’t want to let loose among your feathered friends – and my house is small, so I was always careful that the door to the ‘bird room’ was closed when those little bits of feathers were let loose.
The VERY FIRST FULL DAY that my family was away, I decided to let everyone out for some exercise. The door was shut and the four-footed residents were somewhere else, so I opened all the cages and everyone came out to play. GREAT! They felt like playing, this was a good thing. Then came cage time again, time to sort them out as to who lived with whom and get them all back inside. Fine – one Pionus, check; two cockatiels, check; two pairs of blue Linnies, check, check; two pairs of mixed blue and green Linnies, check, check; 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11— Uh-oh! Who’s missing? The one pair of green Linnies were no place to be found! I searched for an hour for those little mites – under the cages, behind the books, clinging to the cages, in the other bird’s cages. Everything that I could move, I searched in, under and around. NO GREEN LINNIES! Oh dear, now what do I do. They HAD to be here in this room, they couldn’t have opened the door and left! What was I going to tell my little grandson? “Dear Father in Heaven, Please help me find those little green birds!” Still no birds, so I called a neighbor to come and move the big stuff to see if they were behind or under something I couldn’t move. Another hour passed and still no little green birds. All the time I am silently crying for help to Him who sees even the little sparrow that falls.
Then, suddenly, those little rascals appeared, right in the exact place where we had all looked a dozen times. They were there all the time and we just hadn’t seen them. PRAISE GOD they were found.
Sometimes we think we are seeking God and his will for us. We look here and there, up and down and sideways, but we are so busy looking that we fail to see. I hope I learned a lesson from these little creatures. The Bible says, “Be still and know that I am God . . .” (Ps. 46:10a)
Wynona Gordon