Lessons from Birds

Last night I had a dream.  I dreamt that there was a small hole in the ceiling in one of our closets and I knew there was a bird living in it and it would be happier outside.  So, in my dream, I went to get a net and told the children to run and make noise so the bird would be spooked out of the whole and out the open door..to the backyard.  The plan was going great until birds, rats, mice, started pouring out from the hole.  All of these creatures did go towards the backdoor, but my own children didn’t see some of them, small baby birds, and accidently stepped on them.  I thought..in my dream… I am so sad and mad that they stepped on the baby bird, but I know they didn’t do this intentionally.  It just left me sad and with the feeling of trying to fix, repair, save the baby birds.  Then, I woke up.

Dreams are hard for me to shake.  I can’t easily get rid of the emotions that come with bad dreams..even though I know they aren’t real, even though I know it isn’t a real injury or hurt.  My poor husband can attest to this.  I have woke him up to tell him how he hurt my feelings…in my dreams. LOL… NOT kidding, unfortunately.

So I get up..not a morning person…I tease and say that I am not a morning person or a night person but have about 4 good hours from noon – 4:00. LOL.. Anyway, I get up..grab the 50,000 mealworms I bought through Southeastern Insectaries in Perry, Georgia, and go set out to leave 100 or so in a clay plate for the parent birds to feed to their babies.    After, I watch the birds for awhile, I grab my camera to get a photo of them all eating. 

You can see the robin and phoebe parents filling up to go feed their little ones. I go to snap a quick photo of the phoebe babies..so sweet. 

Then, I go to snap a photo of the robin babies.  One is missing from the nest..and the other is dead (half eaten).  I was so sad.  What happened?  The nest was not messed up..it didn’t appear that an opossum or raccon could have done this. The baby robin was just 2 or 3 days old…very small..so whatever just ate part of him …had to be very small.  Poor mama robin!  She was trying to feed him.  She was in the nest when I went to check on the babies.  I didn’t know what to make of it.  A rat?  A mouse?  What could have done this?  I took to Google and found out a few things  : By the time the babies are about a week old, the nest is getting crowded, and the babies are capable of keeping themselves warm, all snuggled together. At this point the mother robin starts sleeping on a tree branch again. If she is a wary mother, you might not see her feeding the young because robins are so fearful of alerting predators to where the babies are... so they simply don't go near the nest if they notice anyone observing them.    I have learned that robins  often leave the nest before they learn to fly and  for this reason, the fledglings have a rather low survival rate, about 10-20%.   If I  had known this sooner, I would have not gotten attached .  Tree squirrels, chipmunks, opossums, rats, mice,  raccoons, magpies, crows, ravens, and jays eat robin eggs and nestlings. I learned that even though BIRDS CAN’T smell humans..the predators can.  I learned that by me moving a branch down so I could photograph the robin babies, I could have left enough scent to attract a mouse or rat to their nest.  L  It makes me so sad that my stupidity could have done them in.   It is just like our sin.  Sometimes we don’t really think something is sinful and that sin ends up hurting those around us.   Sin is still sin…even if it is out of ignorance. 
 I had Noah bury the fledling and the nest. It was heart breaking to see the robin fly to the nest with worms.  I read that Robins can have as many as 3 or 4 sets of babies a summer..so I pray her next set is in that 20% ...that is successful.

As soon as I put up the shovel, from Noah burying the baby bird… a house wren flew into the garage.  I got the net to shoo it out…just like my dream last night.  I got it to fly out after about 10 minutes of trying to convince it that there were no holes in the ceiling.    Weird morning…weird dream!

Romans 8 : 18- 26

Present Suffering and Future Glory

¹⁸ I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. ¹⁹ For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. ²⁰ For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope ²¹ that^[h] the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God.

²² We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. ²³ Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies. ²⁴ For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what they already have? ²⁵ But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.

²⁶ In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans. ²⁷ And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for God’s people in accordance with the will of God.

http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/overheads/pages/oh20010831_70.asp

The Romans 8:22 illustration is to remind us that the world we're living in today is not the world God made. It is a groaning world because of sin. Although we see beauty in this world, we also see ugliness. We see life, but we also see death. We see health, but we also see disease. It is only the Bible's account of a perfect world marred by sin that explains why this world is the way it is. Therefore, Christians shouldn't tell non-Christians that this is a beautiful world God made. We can tell them that there is a 'remnant' of beauty in this fallen creation. The venomous animals, stinging plants, disease-causing bacteria, etc. were not this way before sin. Everything has changed because man rebelled against God.  This is a very, very important point because one of the most-asked questions from non-Christians is, 'How can there be a God of love when there's all this death, disease, suffering, and violence in the world?' We need to explain to them that this was not the world as God made it. It's not God who's responsible for this mess. We are responsible because we all sinned in Adam.