January 30, 2025
This past Christmas, one of the most unique gifts my family has really enjoyed is a Birdsnap bird feeder. Perhaps you’ve heard of these. It is a traditional bird feeder except there is a motion-activated camera that captures anytime a feathered friend comes to dine on the sunflower seeds in the feeder.
There is an app on my phone where I can see pictures and video of any recent visitors. At the end of each day, the kids love to ask me to recount for them all of the birds who have dined at our feeder. We’ve had Carolina Chickadees, Red Fox Sparrows, American Goldfinches, Eastern Bluebirds, Northern Cardinals, and lots of other birds. We also are inadvertently feeding squirrels (which our dog Rosie loves to protect us from), the occasional opossum, and a raccoon that the kids have named “Bandit.”
It has been a lot of fun to receive instant notifications of the wildlife in our own modest, suburban backyard. And it has also made me more attuned to the life of the birds around me.
A few years ago, I read an interesting book by the pastor Debbie Blue called Consider the Birds: A Provocative Guide to Birds of the Bible. Each chapter is an exploration of a different kind of bird mentioned in scripture and what it means for how we live out our faith. Before reading this, I had never realized how often birds played important parts in the narratives of scripture. Some of them come to mind easily: the raven and dove sent out by Noah (Genesis 8:6-19), the quail that feed the Israelites in the wilderness (Exodus 16:12-14), the rooster that crows as Peter denies knowing Jesus (Matthew 26:69-75), and Isaiah’s hopeful message that God’s people “shall mount up with wings like eagles” (Isaiah 40:31; although Debbie Blue points out that it can also be translated as “vultures”).
But there were other references that I had never noticed before: detailed instructions on how to slaughter a pigeon for sacrifices (Leviticus 1:14-17), God parading the ostrich in front of Job to explain the majesty of creation (Job 39:13-18), and how the obscure prophet Zephaniah says that the destruction of Nineveh will be so severe that pelicans and owls will nest in the rubble (Zephaniah 2:14).
Part of the point of the birds in the Bible is to remind us that creation is so much grander than we often remember. I don’t know about you, but I an easily get caught up in my own anxieties, my own worries, my own concerns. The world can suddenly start to revolve around me and my idea of what should matter to God. But sometimes I need to be reminded that beyond my purview is so much more than I have allowed myself to see. Sometimes I need to have my concerns placed in a cosmic perspective. Sometimes I need to consider the birds.
After all, when teaching on anxiety, Jesus said to the disciples:
“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you by worrying can add a single hour to your span of life? And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear?’ For it is the gentiles who seek all these things, and indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.
“So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today.” (Matthew 6:25-34)
