Saturday, August 20, 2016

Dead Birds

There's a passage in The Bible meant to help us not worry about life that compares God's value and care for the birds to His greater value and care for us. It struck me a little differently this morning as I admired the beautifully colored variety of birds on my house and trees adding a pleasant song to the start of my day and then looked to the ground and noticed one of those same pretty birds dead at my feet. Awkward.

I've had conversations along similar lines this week with several veterans I'm blessed to have in my circle of friends. One who worked as a sniper fondly recounted the day of his longest shot as, "... a beautiful, clear, still morning with low humidity, birds singing in the background and the sun in his eyes back-lighting his target." It struck me that one of his happy memories was shooting someone. Think King David and Father Abraham. Awkward.

Another group of believer veterans I talked with made the point that there definitely seems to be many more believers on the battlefield than in the safe zone. They had no doubt that many of the "enemy" their forces had killed were indeed unknown brothers in Christ as well. Along with myself, they all love peace and are very glad to be out of the fighting but can't avoid the logic that, perhaps, in the present world, nation against nation saves more eternal lives than peace does. Awkward.


I went back to the corner of my house when I got home from breakfast with a friend and looked for the bird. My guess is my cat also had breakfast while I was out. If the Bible is clear about anything, it's clear that our current reality is a war zone, physically and spiritually, man against man, cat against bird, whether we realize it or not. Now that makes quite a bit more sense of what I actually see even as it raises it's own set of difficult questions. A little less awkward... and, back to the point, nothing to worry about.