Not so bird-brained?

The Seed Lady has returned!  At least, that’s what Bob calls me.  No, actually that’s what he says the birds call me.  Although I have been grossly neglectful of keeping the several feeders filled for quite a long time now, I have finally gotten my act together in the hopes that the grackles and starlings stay away. 

Yes, I am somewhat discriminatory about my birdseed…

My husband, the bio-prof, says that the avian brain is basically a visual cortex, or as his brother, the business major, interpreted, “see bug, eat bug.”  Gleefully, I noticed that a mommy cardinal chose to grace my eating establishment with her morning presence! Sparrows came by also to test the menu. How cool, after all this time, I give them food, and somehow they find it. To paraphrase Kevin Costner, “if you feed them, they will come…”  

Even so, I’m impressed by the birds’ innate ability to find the food, recognize it as good, and nourish themselves.  If it’s not “food”, say, a weed or a frog, they won’t eat it.  So why can’t we humans be so intrinsically wise??

Ah!  There has been a detour!  Our American diet has been termed “over-palatable”, meaning certain taste buds are over-stimulated by the junk food that is killing us, slowly, and expensively.  This is a valid public health concern, and I could get on the soap box with all my school nurse colleagues, but that’s not the bottom line I’m actually pointing to.  (However, if you’re specifically interested, check it out HERE!)

I’m thinking about a deeper disconnect, one that effects all other decisions in very practical ways.  There’s a great, old-fashioned, theological term for it that our modernity is summarily repulsed by:

Because really the definition of sin is that fundamental disconnect from God.  We were not created like birds, “See God, obey God.”  Birds were created to be birds, but we were created to be in the image of God Himself.  That means, in all of the universe, we are the only creatures who can CHOOSE to disobey (sin against) the Creator.  How incredible is that?

Pretty incredible, until we started looking at food that wasn’t meant for us to eat.  And we still do it, heartily I might add. 

“For the wages of sin is death,…”

Oswald Chambers, author of the classic My Utmost for His Highest, harps on the fact that we must deal with the spiritual reality of sin, my sin.  That it exists, has my name on it, and has created a hellacious dysentery in my soul that will eventually kill me (in more ways than one).  Thankfully, God has invited us to His table, to partake of His food as only He can provide, and that is Jesus Christ and His sacrifice for me.  And you.

“…but the free gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord.”

I would like to eat what was intended from the beginning.

Romans 6:23  Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.