Devotionals

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Sitting here this morning in my screened in man cave, I watch the cardinals, tufted titmouse, hummingbirds, and house finches busy themselves at the bird feeders. The mocking bird who built her nest in a bush next to the garage sits on top of the feeder singing away. Sweet songs rise in chorus from all of them as God summons the first light of morning. It's an ethereal experience.

The happy birds are fed from a harvest they did not sow. They build their nests from materials they did not purchase. The momma birds lay their eggs, and together they raise their chicks from the bushes around our house that they did not plant. The Heavenly Father provides for them.

It's a beautiful picture of God's providential care for me through the years.

This morning's scene caused my mind to drift back to a moment 38 years ago. I was 35, and in seminary just a semester from graduating. I had a wife and was responsible for them. I worked the graveyard shift as a psychiatric technician at a hospital in downtown New Orleans. I caught the bus each night and morning to make it to my 8 o'clock class where I fought to stay awake. I could barely pay the bills and wondered how I could enroll in my last semester.

As I got off the bus that morning, I wanted to quit and work two jobs and then enroll and try to finish. I was overwhelmed with anxiety and doubt. "How could I make it? How could I finish?" These thoughts rushed like a torrent from a New Orleans summer thunderstorm. "No, I can't go on. No I can't make it! It's too hard. It's not fair to my family or to me!"

But if I quit, I couldn't stay in the seminary's subsidized housing. Rent in New Orleans was double what I was paying. I was in a conundrum. I tried to check the tears welling in my eyes but couldn't. All I could see was what I didn't have. All I could feel was gloom and hopelessness.

I stepped on to the beautiful landscaped campus of New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. I loved the place. I loved the professors. I loved my classes. I soaked in their teachings like a hungry sponge soaks in water. But, I couldn't go on. I didn't have the resources or strength to finish. There was never enough.

As I walked through the moss draped oaks surrounded by manicured grass and beautiful flower gardens, God spoke. Softly at first and then loud and clear.

I couldn't see, but I could hear.

I heard rejoicing happy songs. The songs of the morning came through and into my troubled heart. They were the songs from God's winged creatures singing praise to Him for a new day!

I stopped in my tracks and just listened. God spoke to me assuredly and affirmed me. He miraculously brought me to the seminary, and He would see me through to the end.

The morning symphony led me Jesus' words of comfort and care. “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?" (Matthew 6:25-26).

The storm calmed. The sun came out. Yes! The heavenly Father feeds the little song birds. He provides all their needs. None go without. They don't have a worry in the world. They are not bound by fear or doubt. From their unfettered freedom, they sing with joy to their Creator and Provider.

Faith rose within me. I saw the new morning in a different light. Doubt gave way to faith. Songs of praise welled up within me. Everything would be OK. And, it was.

Nothing changed in my difficult financial straits. There was no money that came floating in from heaven to my mailbox. But, I finished seminary and was soon called to a wonderful church in the Florida panhandle that had a practically new four bedroom parsonage. I was thankful to say the least.

I don't know what would have happened had God not spoke to me that morning. As low as I was, I probably would have quit. My life would have been derailed from the road God had placed me on and His purpose for me at least for a time and maybe for a long, long time.

There have been other low points in my life when God spoke through his winged creatures. Each time, I went back to that decisive morning in New Orleans. I remembered his voice. His comforting chorus promising adequate provision. His providential care of me and my family. And each time I remembered, the calm peace of that morning gave me courage to keep on keeping on. "It would be OK. Everything will work out." And it did. God never let me down.

I was a young man then. I'm a senior citizen now, and I can testify as David did, "I was young and now I am old, yet I have never seen the righteous forsaken or their children begging bread" (Psalm 37:25).

Said the robin to the sparrow, 'I should really like to know why these anxious human beings rush about and worry so.’ Said the sparrow to the robin, 'Friend, I think that it must be that they have no Heavenly Father such as cares for you and me.'" - Elizabeth Gowen Chaney (1859)

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