[Faith-talk] Daily Thought for Friday, June 28, 2013

[Paul]

Well folks, here we are at the end of another workweek, for those of us who are fortunate enough to be gainfully employed and, for a certain percentage of you, it's already your Saturday.  Whatever the day of the week it is and time of day, I hope that everything's going well.

When I first read this article a number of years ago, I found it interesting and I hope you do also.  It was written by an individual who went by the name of Ptolemy Tompkins, and his article is entitled "Hope And The Hummingbirds," rendered as follows:

Summer for me meant the return of my hummingbirds.  I called them mine because I'd hung feeders around the porch for 15 years, and I was certain some of the same birds came back year after year.  They gave me a sense of continuity, something I could count on.

One summer I needed the bright flutter of wings more than ever.  In three years I'd lost three important people in my life--my brother, my mom, and a dear friend.  Why live at all, if we're just going to die? I wondered.  The thought wouldn't let go of me.  It robbed me of joy and left me feeling bleak and hopeless.  Death seemed to blot out the sun itself.

The hummingbirds were later that year.  Finally, one afternoon while I sat on the porch bench listening to the wind chimes, I heard the familiar buzz and whir of wings.  "You didn't forget me," I said.  The birds flitted among the flowers and drank from the feeders.  They were as beautiful as ever.  Vibrations from their beating wings charged the summer air.  But not even my hummingbirds could lift my spirits.

Then one morning, sweeping the porch, I saw a hummer lying at my feet, still as stone.  I crouched down beside him.  Another death.  I wept like there was no tomorrow.  God knew when every creature fell.  How could a loving God bear the sadness? How could I?

I gently scooted the bird into the dustpan with the broom.  "You'll rest under the lilacs," I said wearily.  The hummers loved to buzz there.  Walking toward the bushes, a lump hardened in my throat.  I wanted to pray, but for what? Lord, I need You.  Show me how to go on.

Right now I had a job to do, sad as it was.  I stared at the hummingbird.  Yet again, death was the winner.  Then I looked closer.  The bird's chest was moving--just barely--but moving nonetheless.  "You're alive!" I gasped, sweeping him into the dustpan.

I hurried into the house with him and searched through my nature books to find what to do.  Hummingbirds, I learned, required a huge number of calories.  "So that's why you buzz around the feeders all the time," I said.  I got an eyedropper from an old medicine bottle, washed and sterilized it, then filled it with nectar.  I hesitated to touch my tiny friend, but there was no other way.  Carefully, I transferred him from the dustpan to the palm of my hand.  He weighed no more than a breath.

"Don't be afraid." I tried dropping the liquid toward him, but he moved his long, slender beak away.  Then it came to me.  "You need to be upright to drink." Taking one of the feeders from the eave of the porch, I set it on the table and held the bird so he could punch his beak into the nectar.  "C'mon.  You can do it." He made one feeble attempt, then went limp in my hand.

Instantly I got an idea.  I put the hummingbird and feeder in an empty shoebox and balanced the box on the porch railing, just below a hanging feeder.  I sat quietly on the porch bench and waited.  For a few moments, only the warm summer breeze played the wind chimes.  But then I heard the whir of wings as hummers approached the hanging feeder.  The injured hummingbird immediately stirred at the sounds of his friends.  His head came up, and he fluttered his wings, trying to fly.  He managed to land on one of the perches of the feeder in the box.  Another bird joined him.  The healthy bird dipped his beak into the feeder.  To my amazement, my little friend dipped his beak, too.

When the other bird flew away, my bird sat on his newfound perch, still weak but upright.  "Good boy!" After a few minutes, another bird jetted down to the box and helped himself to the nectar, then another.  My hummer drank along with them.

He flipped his wings into gear, hovering inches above the box.  "Don't fall.  Don't fall," I whispered, holding my breath.  He landed safely back on his perch.  Second launch, same scenario.  Later, on the third try, he went strait up above his perch, out of the box, and into the trees.  "Hurrah!" The hummer had reached for life, and he'd found it.

I would reach, too.  Because death never wins, not really.  My mother, my brother, and my friend were with God, and their love was ever alive in my heart.  Hope had come back to me, carried on the tiniest of wings.

A LITTLE HUM-dinger

"A glittering fragment of the rainbow," John James Audubon called the hummingbird, "suspended as if by magic." Even scientists can't resist getting flowery when describing this animal.  Specialist Crawford H. Greenewalt points out that in scientific names for hummingbirds, "the sun, the stars and precious stones appear frequently." The Aztecs of Mexico believed that the souls of warriors killed on the battlefield were transformed into hummingbirds, and in Central America the animal's other worldly beauty and fragility made a harbinger of love and romance.

Along with its diminutive size (the Cuban bee hummingbird is the world's smallest, hardly bigger than a bumblebee) and its beauty, the hummingbird is also famous for its style of flight.  Hummingbird wings work like tiny propellers.  Unlike conventional bird wings, which flap up and down, hummingbird wings move back and forth, as fast as 80 times per second.  The hummingbird is the only bird that can hover motionless in the air like a helicopter, and it's also the only one that can fly backward.

Hummingbirds don't have strong legs, and would rather fly than walk even a few inches.  Once on the wing, they can travel distances that would be impressive for a much larger bird.  The migration path of the well-known ruby-throated hummingbird, for example, takes it across the Gulf of Mexico.

And there you have it for today.  By the way, for those who don't know, the Gulf of Mexico is 500 miles (800 kilometers) wide.  Now, whenever anyone calls you a "bird brain," they are, without knowing it, paying you a compliment.  In order for us to fly, we have to get into one of those fancy machines called an airplane or helicopter, unless, of course, we try balloon flight, but all that requires us to leave this earth in another vehicle.  Which only goes to show that God, in His wisdom, has created birds to fly and some humans to figure out computers.  What a contrast!

And now until tomorrow when, Lord willing another daily thought will be presented, may the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob just keep us safe, individually and collectively, in these last days in which we live.  Your Christian friend and brother, Paul