Consider the birds
Nancy Kennedy
As I write this, it’s pouring rain. Thunder rattling the windows. Lightning flashing all around, zigzagging across the darkened sky.
Also as I write this, I can see three sandhill cranes standing in the rain despite the thunder and lightning, which, in my opinion, is setting a bad example for my cat, Fox.
I have two cats, Fox and Tippy. They’re sisters, but as different as night and day.
If the front door is open, Tippy might go out, but won’t venture farther than the front porch.
Fox, however, spends her days plotting her escape, and I’ve chased her down the street more times than I care to.
She’s also not afraid of thunder and lightning.
That’s not a problem when she’s inside the house. If they’re on the screen porch, Tippy comes inside through the little door flap at the first crack of thunder. Fox never thinks it’s necessary.
I’m trying to teach her that lightning follows thunder, and thunder is the signal to come inside, like the weatherman says.
If I’m home, I’ll bring her inside, but I’m not always home when there’s a storm, and that’s seriously a huge source of anxiety for me because I don’t want to come home to a scorched kitty.
But the cranes, with their long legs, move slowly across the grass in my backyard. They always travel in groups, two, three, five.
Sometimes they separate — two will start to go in another direction; the rest of the group will stop and call to them.
Sandhill cranes make the most annoying sound — a loud, prehistoric trumpeting, “gurrooo-gurrooo-gurrooo.”
They sound like tiny dinosaurs wandering through suburban neighborhoods.
Right now they’re quiet.
I brought Fox into the house earlier, but she’s pacing at the sliding glass door — she wants to be on the porch with the lightning and a closer view of the birds.
Jesus told the people to consider the birds. They don’t worry about anything.
Those sandhill cranes standing out in the rain aren’t afraid. As soon as it stops raining they’ll eat bugs in the grass and go on their way, trumpeting down the street.
Of course, lightning could strike them. We live in a fallen world where every living thing eventually dies.
But right now, that’s not the point.
I sense God reminding me not to worry — about my cats, my kids, my elderly father living alone far away, or whether this will be the year a hurricane blows the roof off my house.
Jesus said worry doesn’t change anything, but it’s hard not to when it’s something you’ve always done.
If worry was an Olympic sport, I’d get the gold medal. Maybe silver in catastrophizing and bronze in imagining worst-case scenarios.
But the birds.
God feeds them. Those cranes in my yard look fat and sassy.
“Are you not of more value than they are?” Jesus said.
Consider the birds.
Consider the Cross.
Outside, it’s still raining, but the lightning has stopped.
Fox wants to go out and I let her.
I wonder, “If God values me that much, how can I not trust Him with the rest?”
Contact Nancy Kennedy at 352-564-2927 (leave a message) or email at nkennedy@chronicleonline.com.
