A lesson in trust

Imagine my surprise when I discovered this beauty sitting under a bush just feet from our porch.  I love cardinals and this year we had babies!  Yes, I said we because their nest was only feet from our porch where I was able to sit and watch the whole process right up until when the littles left the tree.

Oh no, was this the daddy cardinal?  I opened the door from the screen-in porch to see if it would fly away but it didn’t.  I inched closer and suddenly it began to try to crawl.  Something was broken and my presence was causing this beautiful bird angst.  I backed off, went back on the porch, and started trying to find a rescue service.  Unfortunately, it was too late in the day.  What now? Google it.

The best suggestion seemed to be the one that suggested putting the bird in a box explaining this would keep the bird safe and allow me to transport it to a rescue center the next day. Gathering gloves and a box, off I went, and here is where this broken and beautiful bird preached a sermon on trust.

All his “crawling” from my first approach had worn him out and because his eyes were closed, he didn’t seem to notice I was getting closer…until he noticed.  He looked up at me, opened his mouth as wide as I think it can open, and the squawking and crawling began.  With a soothing voice, I tried to reassure him it was okay for me to come closer because I only wanted to help.  Of course, he was only doing what he knew to do to protect himself.  He knew he was in danger and it was up to him to protect himself as best he could.  It was not in his nature to trust.  In his world and situation trust can get you dead.

He didn’t know I loved him, treasured him, admired him, and would do anything I could to help him. He didn’t know he could trust me because he didn’t know me or anything about trust with anything other than his bird family.    

I wanted so much for him to trust me because I so much wanted to help him. Without my help, he was going to be easy prey. I knew he didn’t understand and it broke my heart to see the stress I was causing him by trying to help him.  Doing what was best, I quickly scooped him up, put him in the box, covered it with a cloth, and brought him inside our porch. It wasn’t long until he passed out from exhaustion. After a nice long nap, he started to scoot around, then he bobbed his head a few times so I decided to take him outside.  Just as I was setting the box on the table, he bobbed right out of the box, tumbled over into a chair, then to the ground, and then started hopping through the grass.  He was one determined bird who managed to squawk and scoot his way to a far corner of our yard. I don’t know what happened to that beautiful bird but according to Google, his chances weren’t good. Oh, if he had only let me help him.

How many times has God wanted to help me and I squawk, wear myself out from fighting to get away from Him, determined to do it, fix it, make it myself.  I refuse to trust Him because trusting Him looks more frightening than going off on my own unknown.

It’s hard to trust a God we don’t know. Even harder when what we know by instinct, training, education, and experience says God cannot be trusted. But, in the pages of His book, we can come to know Him by discovering His character, watching how He deals with others, and observing how those in relationship with Him interact with Him.  And, this my friends is how we learn to trust God.  We get to know Him.

Here’s the bottom line, God sent Jesus to rescue us because we are just like that broken bird.  God says we are dead in our sins, don’t want anything to do with Him, we are His enemy, and we are helpless to do anything about our condition. In this condition, we cannot save ourselves.  And further, we are told we are prey.  We have a predator waiting to devour us.  We can turn to God by acknowledging our helpless, sinful, stuck state and receiving the gift of His Son, our rescuer, redeemer, or we can squawk and limp off toward the devourer where we will forever and always be separated from a God who loves us and can be trusted.

Don’t believe me?  Here’s a challenge… crack open the door of your heart open just enough to explore the possibility that God can be trusted! How?  Open His book to the first page and read a little every day.  Ask Him to show you who He is and why He can be trusted. Make sure that what you know about God is first-hand knowledge because it’s a life or death situation.