A Bird’s Eye View of Things


This morning, I poured some coffee and stepped outside to test the weather. It was chilly. I started singing “And Can It Be That I Should Gain…,” softly so as not to disturb the neighbors, and I walked around to the patio in the back. My hymn stopped in the middle of the third stanza when I saw a body floating in the pool. Face down. It was a shock. I grabbed the pole and pulled the corpse from the water. It was a Cooper’s hawk. Just the day before I’d been startled by a rustling in the bushes near the fountain. Some kind of creature darted among the bushes, and I wondered at the time if it was a distressed hawk; but I couldn’t find her. She probably died last night of old age. I covered her with the net and went on with my business.

This afternoon, my appointments finished and the ground thawed, I gave her a decent Christian burial in the gully between the trees. This may seem childish, but I wasn’t sure what to pray over her grave. Then I remembered the Lord Jesus saying the Heavenly Father sees every bird that falls from the sky, and I thanked Him for letting the hawk fall on my patio so she could be buried with dignity.

There’s no great sermon or lesson here—only that the smallest actions in life are often bigger than the largest things we do, and knowing that yields satisfaction.