A flock of Lesser Goldfinch just flew into the tree outside the large library window. There’s another flock in the tree ten feet beyond it. The birds look like leaves bouncing in a breeze and won’t be still for a moment. Whoops. Now they are still like the leaves when the air is still. Or have they flown away? A third flock zips in to join them and they are lively again. There must be at least thirty. Did they fly away while I was writing? Suddenly they are jumping around again. In the farther tree they’re dropping like rocks into the weeds beneath, where they get their seeds and do their gymnastics, hanging upside down as the weed bends and they wrestle with it. I’m chuckling as I watch, it’s like seeing children playing on a jungle gym.

While in the process of meditation on what God might be teaching me through bird life and nature today, I was interrupted by the birds. Amazing, watching them work as a team, sticking together, even though danger doesn’t seem to be threatening. But what do I know? Their living as if danger could pounce and destroy them any moment is one way to stay alive and be ready when suddenly danger does appear. The scripture warns that the devil goes about as a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour (I Peter 5:8). Who lives their life as if Satan is a continual threat? We’d rather “eat, drink and be merry.” even now I’m thinking of what I want to have for dinner, and what snacks I will enjoy as I watch TV. I simply don’t feel the pull of these thoughts and desires slowly taking my life focus from God and what He desires for me as I think on the fleeting pleasures of the moment.

But as fleeting and quick as the birds are, in my sight one second and gone the next, they have caused me to think of eternal things.