Thank you for joining us! Before we begin our devotional, I wanted to share a Comment Highlight from last week:
On last week’s devotional, Mal Whitehorn wrote:
“Daily resurrections in giving time to hear especially when listening asks for my effort. Spring has blended together. Looking back, it’s like an artist's palette after the painting has begun... Swirled Goodness! And there SO much more Goodness to come!”
What a beautiful image and such a hopeful outlook, Mal! Thank you so much for commenting!
If you want to be featured in next week’s Comment Highlight, all you have to do is post a comment on any of this week’s posts or threads. That’s it!
Now, on with this week’s devotional…
they hover like the Spirit at my window wings ablur eyes pinning me to the wall and make a sound like a tiny kiss (which I've come to understand is more curse than affection) for I have forgotten to refill the feeder. they hover like the Spirit and expect me to move; to rise from my chair and take action; these tiny messengers of tenacity, kissing the air and riding the wind they hover for a moment and then vanish.
Now that I have finally decided to hang a hummingbird feeder in our ornamental cherry tree, I have become beholden to tiny creatures no larger than my thumb. These little blurs of action, these tiny beings with hearts that can beat up to 1,200 times per minute. Fearless and fierce, when I lapse on my responsibility they let me know.
It’s not like our songbird feeder, which we only keep filled from October through around March to help our feathered friends through the lean years. On cold winter mornings when I forget to refill the seed, the songbirds don’t seem to complain. They wait around for a bit, and then move along to the neighbor’s yard, keeping their grumblings to themselves.
But not the hummingbirds. They zip to the window and peer inside if the sugar water is gone. Or, if I’m on the patio, they hover out of arm’s reach and stare at me, kissing and buzzing angrily, before flying away.
Even so, they delight me. Watching them dance around each other to find a place at the four-perch feeder occupies me for hours. And as I watch them I think of how each tiny feather, each little claw, each intricate detail of their insides is known to our Artist-God. The flash of their throats is a fire He placed there. The buzz of their wings is a song to His ears. He counts each heartbeat and each perfect springtime egg. Even their tenacity is His gift to them, a way to make them imposing even in their utter smallness.
He knows them, each and all. Inside and out. Just like He knows me.
As I refill the sugar water in the red glass feeder, I think of the way He feeds me. And when the well seemingly runs dry, and my prayers turn angry and complaining, He always asks me to trust that He hasn’t let me wander into lack.
For I am a creature no bigger than His thumb, needy and tenacious and intimately known. Beloved, and fed.
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Beautiful. Just beautiful. I can identify with being little, yet tenacious! If God had made me any bigger I would be imposing.
These incredible, implausible, impossible creatures! God must laugh with delight at His creation -- the cosmos, the hummingbird -- stunningly massive and wondrously intricate. And when hummingbirds swoop and hover, we laugh with Him. "Delight yourselves in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart." Beautiful, Sal.