It's Thanksgiving week in Houston, 75 degrees and rainy, though the sun somehow casts a shadow through it all. Confusing. In my backyard is a buffet of different bird feeders, 6 in all, yet not any two are the same. Two are for goldfinches, two are for fruit eaters, but two are loaded with seeds. This story is about seed-eaters. I am about to run an experiment of the utmost concern for the local Realtor: does location matter, or is it the structure that has the most bearing in appeal.
Consider the birds of the field, specifically the house sparrows in my back yard.
They are mobbing my feeder farthest away from my dwelling; they seem to not even know the other feeder exists.
Is that because they can quickly duck into the shrubbery (spoken like the Knights of Ni)? Or is it that the local squirrel-teenagers use the nearby feeder wire as a zip line, dropping suddenly into the dinner scene of any feeding bird like invaders in an old ninja movie? The nearby feeder has more seeds in it, but perhaps that is less important. Perhaps it's like the scripture that elevates eating up on the roof in peace, over all the trappings yet in the midst of tension.
Perhaps that is the call of Christ, to forsake the pressures and distractions of this world for the simple fulfillment of living at His feet? A call to simplicity, not for self-abasement but for personal fulfillment, choosing the better while seeming to participating in cultural irresponsibility?
I think I'll swap feeders around, just to see...
