God Watching

 I sat in my van heading out of our driveway, car stopped, bird poster on my lap that I had scrambled to retrieve and eagerly observed beaks, feather colors, and tails.  One little village weaver caught a bug right in front of my windshield as I clapped and smiled like a child seeing a magic trick for the first time.  I was mesmerized. 

I have always thought it was sweet, and a bit odd, watching people walk around with binoculars in hand trying to see evasive birds.  A bit of a waste of energy when so much of God’s creation you can get up close to, like a spider web, or treasure from a distance, like a red African sunset.  I don’t know what sparked it, but I decided we were going to study the birds around us in school.  I got mini posters printed for each child, and we made a wall graph in our classroom to chart what birds we’ve seen.  We went to the bird reserve at 6am and 7:30 two different days in the same week.  One day we sat outside eating our lunch under the mango trees, and a blue flycatcher landed on the branch above us.  Acacia said, “Mommy, see that bird!” How many lunches have we eaten under those trees, oblivious to the birds.  Now, we see them everywhere.  I drive down the road, and a bird fliess in front of me, and I want to know what kind it is, what it eats, where it lands.  My children call out from their desks, window seat, and come running in the house to tell me about the birds they saw. I hear a bird call outside and I rush to the window to see who that beautiful voice belongs too. 

"See the birds of the air, they do not sow nor reap nor store up in barns, but your heavenly father feeds them." (Matthew 6:26) Hmmm, yes indeed. Jesus pointed people to the birds too.  But not for the sake of bird watching, but of God watching. "Fix your eyes on things above, not on earthly things." (Hebrews 12:12)  Have you ever had the experience that you read a verse in the quiet hours of the morning, and your heart clings to it, and then, all day, it applies to everything? We are now noticing the birds because we have decided to fix our eyes on them.  We have decided to know their various characteristics and names.

There is a hamerkop nest is behind us in the tree to the left.

  God invites us to do that with him, and then...to see him everywhere.  At work in the big and little, our God wants us to focus our attention on him because that is where we will find hope in a dark world, life and victory when defeat feels inevitable, and joy in the ordinary.  

 Now I'm one of those sweet, odd people who reaches for my binoculars every other minute while I walk along outside.  I also pray I'm that kind of person when I see God at work, recognizing and delighting in him, longing to get a closer look at his beauty.