like the birds

    

I must have read it a hundred times, that God takes care of the birds.

 And yet, I find myself wondering how he’ll feed me. Even after years of provision, I look ahead at my hopes and inward at my fears and somehow the doubt swallows up the inklings of trust like a heavy fog. Some may call it an attachment wound, others the human condition – that it’s a survival mechanism to doubt the good and put more weight on the possibility of pain.

 

But then I pause and look at the birds. The ones that flew south this winter, trusting the trees to hold them, the relative warmth of the south to hold them, and the world they find themselves in to feed them. Perhaps we’re reminded of birds in the gospels because we need to be a bit like them. Trusting our innate pull to seek, to follow seasonal rhythms. To proverbially “fly south” in our winters. To trust that God will hold us up like the trees, that He’ll warm and touch the fear in our souls with new provision, and that there is abundance right here, even in winter.

 

There’s no shame in reading something a hundred times before you learn the lesson. God’s word has been preserved for a reason. Because it is our human condition to wonder, hope, and fear in the same breath. It’s not a weakness, it's innate. So, like the birds, I land on the tree of hope, see the provision this evening of hope, having renewed faith as the fog of fear lifts, and I am fed.