|
Time to take inventory of our total household population.
Let's see...I have one husband and three children. That's all. No, wait...there's also two hermit crabs that are managing to survive.
Outdoors? Oh...well...we have at our bird feeders several cardinals, titmice, chickadees, song sparrows, house sparrows, house finches, mourning doves, a nuthatch or two, a few woodpeckers, one gray catbird, robins aplenty, squirrels, and a pair of goldfinches, courtesy of our five feet tall thistles. At night the raccoons come up to our porch for leavings from the bird feeders.
That's all.
Um...then again, In the last few days we have also acquired a hummingbird at our sugar water feeder. Our birdhouse has become home (after many vacant years) to a family of Carolina Wrens. We also house a family of moles under our side porch under a pile of grass clippings, a groundhog with a complex underground apartment, and a mama deer with spotted twins on our overgrown and woodsy hillside. Occasionally we're visited by a bunch of turkeys, and just yesterday we set up a nursery on our kitchen windowsill for a Monarch Butterfly caterpillar and eggs, which I found on some milkweed leaves at the park yesterday.
We also have two cats who want everything on this menu for breakfast. 
Geez! Do we REALLY have all this in our tiny little home and half acre in the suburbs? Apparently so. I know this sounds like the stuff of country life, but we've managed over the years to create a hospitable environment for the creatures who now call it home. It all started so innocently when I decided four years ago to develop a hobby Grant and I could share during the other kids' naptimes, and it snowballed from there. Now even my husband (who thought birding was for those who no longer had their teeth) has bought a mini tripod so I can snap pics and video from my kitchen windowsill. It has been well used, as you can see. I catch him staring at the feeders as often as I do, and he doesn't DARE pull up those thistle weeds.
There is something about getting close to nature that can't be described in words. The idea that they let us into their world at all is amazing. When the hummingbird appeared after months of waiting, it could clearly see me staring at it. It would hover near the feeder, cast a wary eye, and quickly poke in and out of the feeding hole with its little bill. Then it would pull back out and stare some more, just to make sure I wasn't up to something. I was indeed---snapping pictures like I'd never see it again.
Of course, education plays a big role in what I'm doing here too, both for my children and for us parents. We are learning so much about the world God created and how it was fashioned with every detail in mind and working in harmony, each part of nature playing a role in the survival of the other parts. Who other than an amazing, detailed, intelligent creator God could have designed something so complex and sustainable. Only He could have had the wisdom to create bacteria that breaks down what once was living so it can decompose and be returned to the earth to replenish the soil, encouraging new life. Only God could create a hummingbird, with the brain the size of a grain of rice, to possess the ability to remember what flowers it visited during its 2,000 mile migratory route, returning to them each year. Only God could have designed each plant species to bear seed in order to propagate itself.
Only God...
When I take for granted the world around me I become somewhat numb to just what a wonderful, amazing, awe-inspiring world it is, and I forget to glorify my Creator. What's more, in the awesomeness of what is around me, He thought I was worth making. Do you all understand this? Each one of us has worth in the eyes of the holy, perfect, glorious Lord. And we are made in His image, we are the work of his hands (Ephesians 2:10), and it is we who God the Son, Jesus Christ, was pleased to die for so we might enjoy eternal, perfect fellowship with Him.
I am amazed...awestruck...humbled...inspired. And if I am given the gift to enjoy His creation to a ripe old age and read His Word until I know it forward and backward I will only have a glimpse of how wonderful this God of mine truly is. "For we see through a glass darkly, but then [in heaven] face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known." (I Corinthians 13:12)
In the meantime I will have to "see" and "hear" God through His amazing creation and think of that beautiful hymn by Maltbie D. Babcock:
This is my Father's world, and to my listening ears
all nature sings, and round me rings the music of the spheres. [heavenly bodies]
This is my Father's world, I rest me in the thought
of rocks and trees, of skies and seas, His hand the wonders wrought.
This is my Father's world, the birds their carols raise;
the morning light, the lily white, declare their Maker's praise.
This is my Father's world, He shines in all that's fair;
in the rustling grass I hear Him pass, He speaks to me everywhere.
|
