"I was in prison and you came to visit Me."

Something kind of monumental happened several weeks ago, and it's a sad commentary on the busyness of life that I'm just getting around to writing about it now.

I was a teenager when I came to faith in Christ, and I think it's special how God reached me.  It's certainly special to me!  I was a "churched" youngster.  My parents sent me to Sunday School as a child, and we attended church with periods of faithfulness, then dry stretches of non-attendance.  But I had an amiable relationship with God, I thought. I certainly had a belief in His existence, though He had little to do with my daily life.  I don't believe I would have enjoyed it much if He HAD interfered too very much in my affairs.

I had a flair for music, a singer, but unfortunately chose the clarinet to play in the school band.  My brother has been quoted as saying that no one, but NO ONE, except Benny Goodman, should ever attempt to play the clarinet.  I'm sure his strong feelings come from my early attempts at getting sound from that stubborn instrument and its finicky bamboo reed.  I finally gave it up and my parents bought me a guitar.  I was 16 and eventually taught myself notes, then chords, then even picking.  In 2 years I was adequate, and one of my high school teachers asked me to her apt. one evening for dinner, and to bring my guitar, as she played a bit as well.

I'm digressing a bit -- let me just say that she was a Christian and wanted to start a Bible Study in her home for students and faculty of my high school, and wanted me to be a part of it.  You see, she thought I was a believer already, though I wasn't.  The very first study it was all faculty and me -- and I received Christ as my personal Savior that very night.  It was truly, for me, a trip from darkness to light. 

Photo Copyright Associated Press

About that same time, as God was speaking to my heart, enlightening the muddle of my mind to see His Truth, He was doing the same thing in a mind far superior to my own.  He was at work in the heart and mind of a man named Charles Wendell Colson.  Because we came to Faith around the same time, I've felt a kind of kinship with him over the years.

Charles Colson was President Nixon's "hatchet man", a term he coined to describe himself.  I was just beginning to grasp politics, just starting to watch the evening news and trying to piece things together.  The news was full of the Watergate Hearings, and the name Chuck Colson was like Satan, the man who said he'd walk over his own grandmother for Nixon.  He was ambitious, was a liar, a crook, and had a heart of stone.  So everyone I knew said.

What we did not immediately know was that God had taken hold of that "heart of stone" and was turning it to flesh.  Sometimes we have to reach bottom to look up to God, and Colson had reached the bottom.  A Christian friend had given him C.S. Lewis' book Mere Christianity to read, and it had a profound effect on Chuck.  It turned him to belief and faith in God.  It melted his heart and brought him to his knees.  He was never the same again.  Against legal advice, he pleaded guilty to the charges against him and went to prison for obstruction of justice.  It was, he said, "a price I had to pay to complete the shedding of my old life and to be free to live the new."

His conversion was met with skepticism and mocking by the press and comediennes.  These were, over time, largely silenced, when as a result of his prison term, Chuck Colson became involved in prison reform, founding The Prison Fellowship Ministries.  He devoted the rest of his life to working on behalf of those behind bars around the world.

His Washington Post obituary notes:  "The ministry he founded in 1976 grew into a worldwide movement with branches in more that 110 different countries....In addition to befriending prisoners and converting them to Christianity, Mr. Colson established a rehabilitation program that aimed to cut the recidivism rate..."  (Washington Post, April 21, Michael Dobbs)

He also showed concern for the families of prisoners through his Angel Tree program, which makes sure that the children of prisoners have gifts for Christmas, even though one or both parents may be in prison, through donations of people like you and me.

I was very moved after I read Chuck's autobiography, Born Again, many years ago.  He was a man who, unfortunately like many celebrities who become Christians, have every move, every stumble, broadcasted and examined by a skeptical public, and are so open to ridicule.  How many of us, in our early days of faith could stand that kind of scrutiny?

The world lost a true giant of the Christian Faith when Chuck passed on to Glory and his reward.  He was a man of real integrity. It's hard for me as I see some of the real powerhouses of God age and move on, and I wonder who of us will take their place.  We are so into ourselves, and so lack the service and sacrifice of some of our elders, some of the "greats" of our past.  It was hard for me to see Dr. James Kennedy pass on.  I pray for Charles Stanley as now he sits down to deliver his messages, though I love and admire his son, Andy, and his ministry.  But time marches on and I wouldn't deny these men the rest and reward they so richly deserve. 

Charles Colson was a dedicated Christian man that I greatly admired.  He was articulate, he was immersed in Scripture, and knew how to apply it to our daily lives.  I loved his books, I loved to listen to his radio program, "Breakpoint", as he shared brief bits of Biblical wisdom, and how Scripture applied to our society today.  He was a man who really "stayed the course."

It's not a course I would want.  Prisons and prisoners scare me, and I'm wondering if I'm disobedient for not EVER visiting prisoners in prison!

"Then the righteous will answer him, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thristy and give you something to drink?  When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you?  When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?'

"The King will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.'                                                       Matthew 25:37 - 40

He was a man, I believe, who will hear as he stands before his Maker, Savior, and King:

                          "Well done, thou good and faithful servant."

Photo Pat Burdette

Little Einsteins

OK, OK, I admit it.  I'm biased, I'm prejudiced, I have no objectivity at all when it comes to my four nephews (all wonderful and brilliant young men), or their wives, (fine young women, 99.9999% worthy of them), and I am ready to accept the girlfriends of the unmarried ones, too.  Right after they pass the IQ and integrity exams, followed by the grueling obstacle course in Quantico. 

But all of these over protective feelings  pale in comparison to those I have for this angel pictured here, A______, my great-niece.  Certainly pretty, as stubborn and pig-headed as anyone with Pennsylvania German blood flowing in their veins OUGHT to be -- but also musical and intelligent.  Yet her intelligence has a strange little bent.  In other words, she fits right in with our family.  She was 2 years old in December 2011.

I knew she was her mother's daughter at first, because she likes dresses.  I would have worn jeans to my high school prom if I could have found a dress made of denim.  But, not to worry, because she's musical like I am, and has my will of iron. and a temper.  I pray she doesn't go through everything I had to go through to learn to control it!

Anyway, she is a real mother to her dolls, so she's one up on me in that department.  When I was even older than two, my dolls often found themselves upside down in a corner with extremities askew and bald patches.  Hers are all named, in bed, and covered up.  Completely, even heads, faces.  When they sleep they look like a line of corpses in a morgue, but they will never catch a draft!  And if you have the audacity to uncover a face here and there, or a nose to peek out for oxygen, she will squeal, run over, and cover the offending face again.  Cadavers, every last one.

She's been watching Little Einsteins, lately.  I've never seen the show myself, but I understand that music plays a part.  Some are the classics that I love, Vivaldi, Mozart, Beethoven, Handel.  Amazing.  A________ LIKES the music.  My nephew was out with her in the car driving one day and she requested daddy put on "Little Einstein music."  Yes, she wished to hear the classics.  So now he's gone out and purchased some of the music for them to listen to.

Recently she named her feet.  Please keep in mind she is TWO YEARS OLD.  One foot is named Ella (for Ella Fitzgerald, I think?) and the other Sousa -- for John Philip Sousa, the composer.  I kid you not.  Not long after the christening, her feet were banging against each other and making spectacles of themselves.  When questioned she told her mother that Ella and Sousa were "fighting".  How cute is that?  And creative!

To continue to gush with just one more story -- today my sister, her grandmother, wrote me the latest A______ story.  They had been at the playground, and after they'd left and were driving home in the car, it began to rain.

"Rain, rain, go away,
Come again another day," they sang together.

 Then Little Einsteins raised its head again.  A_______ said "Let's sing it again, only this time, louder -- you know ... CRESCENDO!"

How are we ever going to keep up with this child?

Not "Tin-Grin", but "Knickle Knees"

    For some obscure reason, when I was young, I wanted braces on my teeth and eyeglasses.  The eyeglasses I got, and as soon as I could, traded them for contact lenses.  The dental braces I never got.  But in later years I got something much more permanent, though concealed:  bilateral total knee replacements.

     For the first surgery I had no idea what to expect, no realization of the amount of pain I would experience and the torture physical therapy would bring about (though I did have the benefit of meeting a life-long friend and dear Christian sister in my physical therapist).  The mere SIZE of the incision was a shock to me, as was one of my nurses' description of the actual surgery.  I don't know WHY I didn't research the whole thing a bit more before I did the first one, the right knee, but it had to be done.  It wouldn't really have mattered what gruesome details I was privy to, I suppose.

     A different surgeon did the second knee, and it was night and day.  They went through every disgusting little detail, even showed me what the prosthetic device looked like that they were putting in.  I knew more than I think I WANTED to know about it all.  There was one last parting pearl of information to impart to me, and the pre-op educator did it with great gravity.

     "Listen," the nurse said seriously, "Dr. __________ has a tremendous record of NO INFECTIONS with his surgeries.  One reason is that if you have so much as ONE TINY SCRATCH on your leg, one cut, he will CANCEL your surgery.  Don't even shave your leg before surgery, we will do that.  GUARD THAT LEG from cuts, scratches, ANYTHING that might cut it, DO YOU UNDERSTAND???"

     I solemnly crossed my heart and hoped to die if I got one little boo boo on my leg before surgery.  Then the weekend before surgery my friend, Christine, and my sister, Kathy, and I packed up and went to the beach, Long Beach Island, NJ, for the weekend!  WHOO HOO.

Barnagat Light, Long Beach Island

     Now, my sister and I have always loved going to the shore together, a kind of "girls only" trip.  I love my sis, we have a great time.  Christine's not much for sitting on the beach, but will tolerate it for our sake.  But we love Long Beach Island because there is no boardwalk, only beach, and the lighthouse, and quaint shops, peace and quiet, and we sit on the beach, play games, read, people-watch, talk, sleep.  Now, ever since the movie "Jaws" and the time one August we were overcome by jellyfish in the surf, we are not much for actual SWIMMING in the ocean, but usually we go in for a bit.  For us, on this particular vacation, this is where the trouble began.

Jetty at the lighthouse, bay side

     You see, in a way it was the surgeon's fault.  I probably NEVER would have even gone IN the water if he hadn't said not to get even a tiny scratch.  But, as fate would have it, I DID go in the water that day.

     My sister, Christine, and I were slowly strolling out into the surf, talking together.  The sea was pretty rough, the breakers hard, high, and frequent, so we had decided not to go too far out.  I was mid-sentence, I think, and a little less than knee-deep in water, when I took a step forward with my stronger right leg -- my left leg, the one to be operated on, fairly useless.

     Suddenly I felt nothing in front of me, under my forward foot!  I began to fall forward as I walked right off the end of a drop off.  "So I said to heeeeeeeeeEEEEEE --  AAAAAAAAHHHHHH!"    Christine made a grab for me, but down I went, landing right on my posterior.  I had no glasses on, and was facing the beach, but glanced behind me just in time to see what looked like a tsunami wave ready to break over me.  "NOOOOOOOOOOOO -- glub glub...." and I was turned over and over, butt over head in 3 feet of water, sand and sea creatures in my hair, feet, I am sure, flailing in the air.

     I came up, hair over my eyes and some seaweed draped prettily over one ear, and sputtering.  Christine was still trying to make a grab for my arm, calling for my sister's help.  I glanced at my sister, and she was helpless with laughter, holding her stomach and doubled over.

     Suddenly, without even seeing it coming, I was hit again with another driving wave, and there I was, feet in the air, head in the sand.  Charming, I must look so charming, I thought.  Christine was trying to get a grip on me, clawing ridges in my forearm.  When I caught sight I my sister again I think she was in danger of drowning from laughter, she was very nearly falling into the water herself.  I was thinking I could have saved myself a lot of trouble if I'd drowned her as an infant.

     I was so hindered by my bad knee I just COULD NOT regain my footing, and I began to look like the creature from the black lagoon with each successive wave, covered in sand, shells, seaweed, small sea life and who knows what.  Finally, a man waded out from the beach to help, a smoking butt hanging from his mouth.  He was so untroubled by the waves that, I swear, the ash did not fall from his cigarette.  He and Christine each grabbed an arm and helped me up, and I was able to get my bad leg under me.  We thanked him profusely and he waded back to shore.  My sister weakly followed behind, still periodically giggling.

     I probably got another 5 paces before a particularly nasty wave hit me in the back of the knees and -- you guessed it -- down I went yet again.  Words can not describe the humiliation of flopping around in that shallow water, trying to get up, hearing Christine call, "Oh, man?  Oh, ma-an?" she sing-songed sweetly.  "Can you help us one more time?  We promise we're going in to shore now."

     The man waded out yet again, tossing his butt into the water.  Up I got again, with the help of the three of them, my sister having recovered from her seizures and fits of hilarity.  Christine said to the man, as a comfort and a promise, "We really ARE going to spend the rest of the day on shore!"  I tried to thank him myself with as much dignity as I could muster, with my hair plastered to my head so oddly and decorated with the treasures of the deep.

     As we finally accomplished land I hopefully said, "Do you think anyone noticed what was going on?"

     My sister and friend looked at me with pity.   "Oh, I'm sure no one noticed."

     Secretly we all knew we'd be the discussion around many a blanket, towel, and dinner table, and possibly the subject of a home video or two.  Oh well, everybody loves a clown......

     And my surgery?  Well, it was with heavy heart I showed the pre-op nurse the tell-tale scratch on my knee on the morning of surgery.  She looked at me, her lips a tight straight line, looking like an old west hanging judge.  She said she'd check with the doctor and left.  I sighed.

     Soon the doctor appeared and with a serious face examined the 3/4" shallow scratch on my knee.  Probed it, squeezed it, pushed, pulled.

     "No,"  he said with a brilliant smile, "completely superficial.  We'll go ahead with surgery!"  I threw my arms around him with joy.

     Now I have two metal knees, and I can't get through airport security stark naked.  But, by golly, I'll bet I'm a better match for those LBI waves now!!!

Hunger Games

OK, I admit it.  I read the first book, The Hunger Games.  I confess I found it pretty riveting.  I could not put the book down, and when I had to leave it, to cook or help with something around the house, I did those chores with only a very small part of my mind.  Most of my mind was in Panem, in the Arena.

Copyright Lions Gate Films

At first I was amazed as I read the book. No cussing at all, no using the Lord's name in vain.  No sex at all, just some chaste kissing and sharing a cave for warmth.  The main characters seemed to have a moral center -- caring for their family and friends in bleak and terrible circumstances, usually caring for them sacrificially, lovingly.  Though the protagonists, Gale and Katniss, and later Peeta, had a core of anger about their circumstances, they were not cruel to those around them, but directed it toward those responsible, not blindly taking it out on the innocent weaker ones around them, like bullies.  I found myself drawn in to their pain, their pride, their struggles to stay alive.

Of course, there is real violence in Panem.  I know I'm giving nothing away when I tell you that there was a great rebellion many years before, against the Capitol, and when it was finally beat down, District 13 was utterly destroyed and the other 12 districts enslaved and starved by the Capitol.  Each District specialized in something, be it textiles, electronics, fruit orchards, fishing, or coal mining, as was district 12's specialty, but all for the benefit of the Capitol. They live in luxury, while the rest starve.  District 12, the coal mining district, is where Katniss, Gale, the young man who teaches Katniss all she knows of hunting and snares, and Peeta, the baker's son, all live. To remind the Districts of their enslavement to the Capitol, the people are starved and kept captive.  In addition, once a year they  have a lottery, and one girl and one boy between the ages of 12 and 17, called "tributes", have to go into an arena of some large area of a different climate every year, of  unknown hardships and traps. There they must find weapons, somehow survive by overcoming the hardships of the arena's environment, and by killing each other until there is One Survivor.  They called these horrible "games" the Hunger Games -- I forget why.  Maybe because if you win, you and your family get enough food for the rest of your lives, though your family members' names still get put in the pot for future lotteries, as well as any children you might have..  Just not your name.  You are "safe" from the Arena, but not from the heartbreak of seeing your loved ones go through the trauma of waiting to see if their names are picked, or if they must actually go.

I'm taking a long time to explain all this -- sorry! To hurry along,  Katniss' family consists only of her mother and her little sister, an innocent, named Primrose.  Katniss hunts and is as tough as Primrose is gentle, young and protected from the harshness of life by Katniss.  It is Primrose's first year to have a name put in, just one slip of paper, but Katniss has her name in many times, on many slips of paper, having an extra paper in for each time she procured extra food for her family and because of her age.  For each year after the age of 12, they put and extra slip in (one name slip age 12, two name slips age 13, etc), so your chances increase with age, plus the extra slips for extra food.  Prim is nervous, but Katniss tells her how unlikely it is, out of the thousands of names, that Primrose will be chosen, as she only has one paper in those thousands to be picked.

Of course, Primrose's name is picked!  Katniss knows this is a death sentence for Primrose, so she volunteers to take Primrose's place. (I remember Jesus in the Gospel of John:  "Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends."  John 15:13)  So Katniss takes her sister's place in the Arena, even though she feels it is her own death sentence.  But she takes comfort in knowing that her family will at least get extra food for a month just because she went, even if she doesn't come back a Victor, and Gale promises to look out for them after her death, even as she would have done for him.


I won't share any more, except to say that Peeta is the boy chosen to go, and THAT has it's own set of difficulties for Katniss. She doesn't know him well, but the one time they had contact as children it was when he saved her and her family from starving by giving her some bread, even though he was beaten for it.  She is sorry that someone she knows, and was kind to her, is now someone she will have to kill to survive.


In the Arena, what fascinated me wasn't the hunt, one for another to the death, though it had some interest in her cleverness, but the things Katniss did to survive in her environment -- the ways she found food, kept warm, found water, etc., and yes, the ways she eluded her predators.  Her love for Rue, a fellow tribute, who reminds her so much of her little sister, and her agonizing over the thought she may have to eventually kill her, as well as Peeta, for whom she begins to have feelings.

But I wondered, as I read the first book, how really far we are from the Hunger Games?  I'm sickened, when I flip to on TV, by what I see, and I've taken to mostly watching old movies or nothing at all.  The author, Suzanne Collins, said she wrote The Hunger Games kind of in reaction to Reality Shows, and  I despise most of them myself.  She fears we are becoming more and more hardened to human suffering and we will end up like The Hunger Games, missing the humanity in those around us, without compassion, without love, without pity.  I've wondered about this myself.  The author is concerned that as we, in these reality shows, continually watch people suffer, it becomes unreal, and we become hardened to it, just as the Roman Empire became hardened to the violence of the Colosseum, which is what The Hunger Games' Arena is, of course, modeled after.

I mean, is there no limit to the humiliation we will watch others go through for entertainment?  I absolutely can not bear to see it.  Intervention shows, shows where you get to watch people argue out infidelities, paternity, same-sex travesties, do interventions for their addicted family members, go on dates with a bunch of people while we watch them choose mates, even swap wives for awhile to see how the new wives handle the family -- and more.  There are some family dynamics that were meant to be PRIVATE, and some not to be explored at all!  We become so HARDENED to these things, we have no feelings anymore for what is evil, what is painful, we lose all compassion for each other, it all becomes ONE BIG SHOW.  


As a culture, we are just a step away from the Arena.

In the old movies I watch, the violence is virtually bloodless.  Maybe not realistic, usually bad guy that is shot has a half dollar spot of blood where the bullet went in and a small trickle of blood from the corner of their mouths.  That was it, but you got the idea.  There used to be a rule in the studios that no bad guy could prosper.  Movies today, the violence is slow, bloody, the camera lovingly scanning over the body as the bullet wrecks destruction, the knife mutilation, or whatever.  Teen horror movies are the worst, I can't watch them at all, the Friday the 13th, Final Destinations, and the rest, with each death more horrible than the last.  No brains to the plots, just more and more gore.

When I was in Creative Writing class in High School I don't think I learned much, but one thing my teacher said really stuck in my mind.  He was talking about sex in novels or movies and what constituted pornography.  He said "A love scene takes you to the bedroom door and stops, the rest is imagination. Pornography takes you beyond the bedroom door."  By that definition we have a lot of porn during Prime Time TV.  VERY LITTLE IS LEFT TO THE IMAGINATION!!

What is my point to all of this??  I have a few.


One:  In every generation we are becoming more and more hardened to the sex and violence in our culture, tolerating more and more.  This is no good for us as a culture.  We are speeding ahead to our death:  a death of morality, of conscience, and of people. 


Two:  Christians want to be able to "engage the culture", but at what point do we harm ourselves and our children by letting too much in?  We don't want our kids to be geeky morons that get picked on, but we don't want to lose them for the infinitely more important eternal, either.  It's a fine line.  I spoke to a dear friend once, who has great kids, but one is straying from the Lord.  I asked her, even before he was straying, if she would have done anything different while raising her boys.  She said, "I would have monitored their TV more, things like that.  Been more strict about what I let in to influence them."  Would things be different for her youngest?  Who knows.  You can do everything right, and a child can go away for awhile.  You can only do your best and pray.  But do we want to make it harder for them?  It's a fine line, and I don't have children, so who am I to say???  But I wonder if we are losing our children in the church because we give them too much.  Too much materially, and too much of our sick culture.


Three:  Am I willing to give up the things I enjoy if I think they are harmful to me in subtle ways, or worse, to those around me?  It really is the heart of 1 Corinthians 10:23,24,31-33, I think.

“Everything is permissible”—but not everything is beneficial. “Everything is permissible”—but not everything is constructive. ²⁴ Nobody should seek his own good, but the good of others...... ³¹ So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God. ³² Do not cause anyone to stumble, whether Jews, Greeks or the church of God— ³³ even as I try to please everybody in every way. For I am not seeking my own good but the good of many, so that they may be saved.

There's the rub!  Sometimes I wonder if I really am loving enough to give up something I enjoy for the good of someone else, or even for my own good!  And that's no good for me!  Or my brother.

Did I say that as a culture we are one step away from the Arena?  Maybe I am on the path as well. 


I still think, for the most part, The Hunger Games is a really good read, but I was surprised to find out it was a Youth Novel.  Maybe I'd have to pre-read it before I'd let my 14 year old read it.  And I don't think I'd let my 12 year old near it!

Bird-brains

I love birds.  Well, sometimes it's actually a love-hate kind of thing.



I love their singing and their bright colors, like the Goldfinches we saw all summer bathing shamelessly in the open in our birdbath, or the Bluebirds that were eating berries off our pear tree a couple autumns ago.  I love sitting in a group of trees, listening to their varied songs, a cacophony of different choruses, yet all blending together in that beautiful chime of a new spring.  And doesn't everyone look for those first Robins of spring, with their fat red breasts puffed out with pride at being one of the first harbingers of the season?  They just crack me up when they're on the hunt, hopping around the yard, then they stop short and turn their heads to the side, looking (listening?) for that elusive worm.  How do they do it?  Then the peck and some sort of squirming thing is usually in the grasp of their beak.......or not.  Sometimes it's a miss.  

I love how, on a winter's day, they skip and cheep and chirp through the snow around the bird feeder, those in the feeder scattering the seed all around and OUT of the feeder.  Then the ground feeders, the smaller birds, the Sparrows, the Juncos (Snowbirds), Mourning Doves and the rest gobble them up.  I enjoyed how they all scattered, but not too far away, when I would go to fill the feeder, then swoop in almost as soon as I turned away to see what offerings I had left them.  Those Chickadees in their happy black caps, the Nuthatches daringly walking upside down on branches, obviously the acrobats of bird-dom, the Titmice with their feathers standing up on their heads, scandalized at the strangeness of their names.  Not mice or mouses, after all!

Sometimes birds are quite quarrelsome.  Oh, I expect it when a nest of young-in's is involved.  A nest is a bird's castle, after all.  And what mother or father would not protect its child, be it an egg or a ball of fuzz with a gaping beak?  I remember when I was a pre-teen (this is when my nephews would bring up covered wagons, but it was really late 60's), a pair of Barn Swallows took residence in our detached garage.  By the time the nestlings left home, the Swallows were wrecks from our constant invasions and we were in no better condition from being dived at regularly by the frantic parents who would miss our heads by, it seemed, centimeters.

But Sparrows at a feeder seem to waste so much time flying at one another, trying to keep territory, or take over territory, when every bird has pretty much the same seed everywhere in endless supply.  They'll fight over a twig on a bush, the branch of a tree, a spot on a wire --  they bear witness to the adage that the grass is always greener on the other side.  Even Robins, who seem to be above such things, will squabble a bit. The other day I saw three of them searching a bit of grass, hunting for prey, in a large clipped yard near my office.  Plenty for all, really, vast in bird terms.  Then one dived at another's feet, chasing him about two feet away.  The put-upon bird looked around and vented its frustration on the third, diving at THAT one's feet, sending it flying off a bit.  Then the first one was at it again, all thought of the hunt gone as all three began chasing each other around over a four foot square bit of ground in a 50 foot square field.  Surely there is a spiritual lesson there somewhere!

Mourning Doves strike me as kind of odd.  Their cry is mournful enough to deserve their name, to be sure, and my friend, Christine, has gotten down the skill of imitating them very well.  She will stand in our driveway and look at a lone dove on a wire and coo to it. It tilts its head and looks at her quizzically.  Christine coos a few more times and soon the dove answers and they have a little conversation going.  Soon, however, Christine must coo something offensive because the dove abruptly flies off with a final whir of wings and that whistling coo they make, in apparent indignation.  But I really find them odd -- the doves, not Christine -- because of their strange reluctance to fly.

I sometimes wonder if they're a little neurotic, which might be another reason why they are mournful Mourning Doves.  Nearly every day I will encounter one or two at least once while I'm driving to work, and where are they?  In the road.  Not NEXT to the road, not in a field kind of NEAR to the road, but IN the road.  Moreover, I know these birds are capable of flight, and I am bearing down on them at about 45 or 50 MPH but they start WALKING away.  I hit the brakes, of course, and hope they will fly.  No, their only acknowledgement of their danger is that they will begin to WALK FASTER, their heads jerking frantically in time......yet walking.  I'm nearly on top of them now, "STUPID BIRDS" I gasp, and finally they take wing, a slow and low flight, 6 inches from my bumper, and flit to the side of the road.  Sometimes I'm not sure if a tire has clipped a few feathers on the way past, but usually I look back and there are no little carcasses, so I know they get away.

Robins seem to have this same distaste for flying.  They walk an awful lot for a species that were given by God the wonderful gift of flight.  Maybe it's because God also gave them such teeny weeny little brains.  Their eensy weensy little brain pans must be about the size of a pencil eraser, after all.  I understand the walking when they're hunting worms.  But they walk entirely too much, in my opinion.  I've seen them walk right across a road, a two lane road, instead of flying.  Isn't that just a little daring for something that could be squished under one tire of a vehicle?  And, like the Mourning Dove, instead of flying when my car is coming, I get this fast walk, then a REALLY fast walk, with the head bob bob bobbin' along, along, but if I do hit it, there will be no more throbbin' that old sweet song in the Robin household tonight, let me tell you.  But no flying, sometimes not at all, and I've actually, I'm ashamed to stay, come to a NEAR STOP when there is no traffic.  I'm a sucker for wildlife and hate roadkill, though I've never cried over a possum or skunk.  I have been upset by cats, rabbits, squirrels, chippies (Chipmunks, to you), deer, etc. It just seems I shouldn't be so upset over animals when children lose their lives daily due to abuse or want of good food or health care.
                       But to continue =>

One day I came home from work and Christine looked at the front of my car and -- uh oh.  Sticking out of the front of the grill of my car were, I tell you no lie, two stiff bird feet.  MURDERESS.  At least I felt that way until we took the bird out and saw what kind it was.  It was a Robin.  Then I knew the truth.  Not murder, but SUICIDE.  I know this not because of the Robin's penchant for walking, but because of their other equally insane habit of swooping across the road at about a FOOT off the ground RIGHT IN FRONT of my car.  Are Robins, as walkers and low-flying swoopers, afraid of heights or something?

All of this makes one thing Jesus said in Scripture very clear to me.  Of COURSE he watches over Sparrows, even though they are small, a dime a dozen, and argumentative.  To watch over Mourning Doves and suicidal Robins would be MUCH too tiresome, even for Him.

Right, I'm no Bluebird, but Bluebirds don't mind sharing!