As I pondered last week, the hummingbird turf war has begun. If you’ve never seen this, it is quite interesting. These birds are so cute, it’s hard to imagine them fighting with each other, yet they do. It’s getting late in the season for them and they’re trying to “fatten up” for their migration (they head to Mexico or Central America) and get really defensive of their food sources.
There is one male hummingbird that swoops down out of a tree any time another hummingbird tries to get near the feeder in my back yard. Their normally tender little chirp (more like a squeak at times) is replaced by coarse, shrill noise.
Last night as I was working on a flowerbed in the front yard, two hummingbirds got into a
little battle. One gave up his efforts to get to the feeder and took off right toward me with other chasing him. They buzzed no more than a foot from my head on the way by. My first thought was, “Aren’t you guys scared of me here?” If I had stuck my hand up quickly I might have been able to end their little battle–permanently.
So, now the life lesson. These two hummingbirds flew right by me last night, totally oblivious to the fact that I was the person that cleans and fills these feeders for them. I am the source of this food for them which they are currently fighting for control of. Yet they had no idea that I’m the person supplying that for them.
How often am I like that with God? Sure, I don’t walk right by Him in a physical sense. But how often do I ignore Him as the source of my blessings? How often do I ignore His mighty handiwork in this world? How often am I close to “the least of these” and fail to recognize it? And, as I described last week, how often am I in my own little turf war defending some source of blessing when there’s more than enough food to go around.
Sometimes, I just don’t get it, do I?
