What God taught me through a baby bird…

Two weeks ago while trimming some severely overgrown bushes in front of our house, we discovered a bird’s nest.  Upon further examination, we were thrilled to discover that the nest contained three little speckled eggs.

We immediately stopped our trimming and left the nest alone with the hopes that the disruption we had caused wouldn’t affect the eventual hatching of the eggs.  In the meantime, however, I was personally going through a hard time emotionally.  For weeks, I would find myself feeling sad and depressed and although I thought I initially knew the cause, as time went on and I didn’t feel any better, I just couldn’t figure out why I was feeling so out of sorts.  Each day I went through the motions, awaiting the day when I would wake up and feel like myself again.

Meanwhile, several days after we discovered the nest, my husband thought he saw movement inside so we all trekked outside to take a look.  I took along my camera (of course!) and a chair in case I needed to get higher to see inside.  As soon as I climbed up and aimed my camera, this was what greeted me…  Precious, huh?

Photography has been such a gift over the years because it has taught me so much … how to see the world with a different perspective, how to appreciate the little details, how to have confidence in my abilities, how to capture the seemingly insignificant moments in life, etc.  This time, however, God used my love of photography to remind me about his character which eventually brought me out of that period of discouragement.

The following day after capturing the baby birds with my camera for the first time, I sat at my computer and went through each image one-by-one, marveling at the gift of new life and the blessing it was to observe it first hand.  As I looked at and edited the image below, however, I felt God telling me that I needed to mimic the posture of that helpless baby bird.  You see, the bird couldn’t see anything at this point in its young life, however, when it sensed my presence, it immediately lifted it’s head and open it’s mouth anticipating a meal.  The bird trusted that if it’s mouth was opened wide, good things would come.

In the same way, God reminded me that if I, too, would open myself up and trust that good things would come, he would satisfy my needs as well.  And even though I wasn’t even sure what my needs were, he knew!  Sounds simple doesn’t it?  But God also knew that I needed that visual picture of the baby bird’s posture to remind me that God wants to fill my life with good things!  And when I speak of good things, I’m not talking about the material things of this world.  That wasn’t what I wanted and it isn’t what I needed.  For me, “good things” means:  peace, contentment, the reminder of God’s faithfulness, friendship, love, a deeper relationship with God, patience, truth, security in who I am, etc.  Those are the good things that I believe God wants to fill me with.

As cool as that is, the story doesn’t end there.  If it wasn’t enough for God to give me that visual representation of his care for me, he also confirmed the truth through my quiet time the next day.

I am currently working through my second year of reading through the Bible in a year.  I use a daily reading plan to keep me on track which means I don’t choose which passages to read each day – the plan lays it all out ahead of time.  On this particular day, a day after God used the picture of the baby bird to bring me out of my discouragement, one of my assigned chapters was Psalm 81.  I read the first several verses but was stunned when I came to verse 10…

For it was I, the LORD your God, who rescued you from the land of Egypt.  OPEN YOUR MOUTH WIDE, AND I WILL FILL IT WITH GOOD THINGS (emphasis mine).  I couldn’t believe my eyes!  Open your mouth wide and I will fill it with good things?  Did it really say that?  Those were almost the exact same words God spoke to me when I first looked at the picture of the baby bird and there they were on the page of my Bible!  And further, next to the verse were the words I had written last year when I read that portion of Scripture, “picture a baby bird with it’s mouth open wide, waiting for food from it’s momma.”  Wow!

I’ve been a Christ-follower long enough that I shouldn’t be surprised when things like this happen.  Yet, there I sat … stunned!  Not only had God given me a clear, visual picture of what my relationship with him should look like, he confirmed it nearly word-for-word through Scripture.  I stand amazed!

Now in all honesty, I debated about whether or not to share this experience here in such a public forum.  But when it came down to it, I couldn’t not share it.  Publish his glorious deeds among the nations.  Tell everyone about the amazing things he does.  Psalm 96:3 (And that was part of my assigned reading from yesterday!)

God is alive and active!  God is at work in my heart!  God wants us to trust him!  God is relational!  God is personal!  God wants to fill us with good things!

How can I not share that?

For it was I, the LORD your God, who rescued you from the land of Egypt.  Open your mouth wide, and I will fill it with good things.  Psalm 81:10