Celebrating life or worrying about life, you decide?

Day six

I have a hummingbird friend. He sits in the tree in my front yard, and often he visits the hummingbird feeder on my porch. Sometimes he will come and hover a couple feet away from my chair, maybe to see me? Honestly, I don’t know if it’s a boy or a girl. I can’t even say if it is the same bird day by day. That it sits on the same branch on that tree, leads me to think it is the same bird.   

Can you see him?

Last year we had tons of hummingbirds. Well not exactly a ton, more like a 1/8 pound of hummingbirds. It was not uncommon to see three or four of them flitting about around the feeder. But sometimes one hummingbird would come and chase them all away. It was sort of cool to watch them fight. The maneuverability of a hummingbird is amazing. From a dead stop to moving forwards or backwards, up or down, hovering, but eventually, like a bullet, they would fly away. Until one hummingbird remained sitting on the feeder, the king of the porch. Chasing away all who wanted to share the plunder. 

Hmm, the ”plunder”. Where does it even come from? I think we need to see the big picture. We need to see what happens outside of our “porch”.  In this story, the “plunder” comes from my wife Suzanne, the queen of the porch, while she regularly refills the feeder with sugar and water. There is more than enough for everyone. There is no reason to hoard the food.

But, me and my hummingbird friend often don’t get it. But if I can “see” who fills the “feeder” I don’t need to worry about hoarding it, instead, I want to share it. I don’t want to be sitting alone on my porch chasing my fellow hummingbirds away. 

Jesus uses a metaphor about birds as well.  

“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Isn’t life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than them?”          

Mat 6:25-26

Worrying about your life is the opposite of celebrating your life. Somehow, the worries of my life aren’t as big as they used to be because I realize now the “feeder” is full. There is enough for this day. There was enough yesterday. There will be enough for tomorrow. God is so faithful. The problems of tomorrow will come for sure, but the feeder stays full.