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Friday, May 30, 2008
Carefree Faith
Psalm 131; Matthew 6:24-34
The bumper sticker says, "If you can keep your cool when people all around you are losing theirs, you obviously don't understand what's going on!" Wise words for worrisome times.
Right in the middle of his Sermon on the Mount -- his exposition of the core values of the Kingdom of God -- Jesus gives us the perfect antidote to worry. For the worst of times and the most humdrum of ordinary times.
Take a lesson, he says, from the birds of the air. Hmmm...
In the May 20, 2008 issue of The Christian Century, I found a beautiful meditation by Tom McGrath on that good advice. Here's what he said:
My wife and I have found a great remedy for those times when life seems overwhelmingly stressful, our worries mount, and our inner resources seem depleted. We consider the birds of the air.
Specifically, we pop in a DVD titled Winged Migration, Jacques Perrin's Oscar-nominated documentary that follows dozens of species of birds on their amazing migratory trek -- some covering more than 2,000 miles. On Friday nights or Sunday evenings when we are too spent to read but wary of the silly and gruesome fare on network television, we pull out this disk. As the opening credits roll, we may be anxious and worried about our lives. But within minutes we are mesmerized at the sight of gaggles of birds, large and small, elegant and comical, obeying the secret inner prompting that sets them to fly hundreds, even thousands of miles to serve the demands of life and survival. Perrin, working with five crews totaling 450 people, including 17 amazing cinematographers, makes you feel as though you're traveling with and among the flocks, close enough to see the determined looks on their faces and hear the relentless beating of their wings.
Know what? Wonderful as that is, all you really have to do is look out your window or sit on your deck a while. There's a robin doing the amazing worm trick. And here's a pair of mourning doves cooing away world without end. Oh look, a black crow ten times a dove's size is toe-dancing on that pine tree's topmost branch. And wow, catch the blur of that irridescent hummingbird's wings as he sucks a nasturtium almost dry.
And suddenly you realize that life has slowed down, your burden has lightened, your body and soul have relaxed. Because of birds.
That Jesus. Always way ahead of us.
Listen to the GODcast!
posted by Jack Buckley at
11:29 AM
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