Where Have They Gone?

Matt 6:26  Look at the birds. They don’t plant or harvest or store food in barns, for your heavenly Father feeds them. And aren’t you far more valuable to him than they are? 

               Our daily ritual, mine and Zeus the Labs, is to get up early and walk the country roads where we live. The road in front of the house only runs about 200 yards, then it turns into dirt ruts and wanderers thru the wooded bottom lands for several miles before reattaching itself once again to the bustling world up near the interstate. This was the road we chose that day.

               As is often the case, Zeus soon outpaced me and was gone off on some errand in the brush, so I sat down on the old railing of  an ancient iron bridge that crosses Caney Creek. Sitting there and enjoying the deafening silenced I was shaken out of my stupor by a flock of birds.

               This was not just a gaggle of birds, or a flock of birds, but an entire nation must have passed before me, as it seemed to have no end. Over the bridge, up the hill and out of sight they went, numbering, I guess, in the gazillions.. The experience was so awesome that it stuck with me throughout the day. Later I mentioned it to a friend, and asked him if he had ever seen anything so grand.

               “The more amazing thing,” he remarked, ”is that considering all those birds and the millions of others that are around us, you never see a dead bird laying around.”

                              He was right, I thought, and, quickly retracing the fading steps of a lifelong memory, I could not recall ever seeing a dead bird lying on the ground. ‘Where have they gone’, I asked myself? ‘What happens to them?’

               My number one source of information is, of course, the wise and ever faithful ihone app, Siri.  Quickly  I queried her, and she sent me a text that said that the birds  just die and fall into rivers and lakes as they migrate every year.  Really?

                              It is obvious that Siri had not flown thru Texas of late, or she would know that woodpeckers, owls, hawks, and most vultures do not migrate, and I don’t see them on the ground either. Siri has become senile, I decided, so I made up my own theory, and it fits my fancy and soothes my searching soul.

               I recalled the old story of how Enoch once lived in a cabin at the edge of the woods, much like I do, and every morning the Lord would come meet him at the gate, and they would go walking and talking together. Late one afternoon, after they had walked and talked till late in the day, Enoch remarked that he had best turn around and head back as dark was quickly approaching, whereby the Lord  said to Enoch, “Why don’t you just come on home with me tonight, Enoch? My place is much closer than yours, and we can continue our visit there?” And so they did and Enoch was never seen again.

                              I am thinking that the Lord opens the windows of heaven every morning and sends out the birds of every kind so as to entertain us and eat the bugs and fill the skies, and, when they have finished their assigned tasks, they just fly back  to where they came from, thus we never see them cluttering up the landscape, but , rather like Enoch, they are back where they began, just outside the Lords window. After all, the Father did tell us not to worry about them, or ourselves, for that matter. He would take care of everything, He said, and looking back I can see that He has.

               Getting up off the old iron railing and whistling for Zeus, I started up the hill in the direction the birds had taken, never finding one along the way. Didn’t expect to. And then it occurred to me that  I was walking in the same direction the birds had taken, and soon, I am sure, I will arrive where they did. And when I get there I think I will just  sit down  and talk with Enoch and the Lord and watch the birds as they fly off in the direction from which I had just come.