Awakenings

I have been awakened the last several nights by the oddest of sounds.

Birds.

Birds chirping.

Lots of birds chirping -- at 1 a.m.

I don’t recollect this ever having happened before -- wakened, not by an annoying dog, or a sick child, or terrifying thunder, but by the beautiful songs of the birds. I wonder: Don’t the birds generally sing their melodies as day begins to dawn each morning? Or have they always chattered away during the middle of the night, unbeknownst to me?

I’m smitten with the birds. Have been for several years now. Graeme Gibson, an author and bird enthusiast, says bird-lovers have “stumbled onto a seductive truth.” He writes: “ … paying attention to birds, being mindful of them, is being mindful of Life itself. We seldom think of it this clearly, but sometimes, unexpectedly, we are overtaken by a sense of wonder and gratitude.”

In the middle of the night, the birds sang. And it was lovely. Crisp. Clear. Pure. Unblemished by the noise of day.

And I was overtaken. Overtaken, indeed, by a sense of wonder and gratitude. Wonder, that beauty would find me in the midst of my sleep (isn’t that always when beauty hits us strongest – when we’re, metaphorically speaking, asleep). And gratitude, that I would be given so sweet a gift.

Gibson says, "Surely it is the encounter with a force much larger than ourselves that moves us [to this sense of wonder and gratitude]." I’m not so sure what "force" Gibson meant; life, maybe. But he may be more right than he even realizes, because of this I am certain: surely, it was an encounter with a Force much larger than myself that moved me so in the middle of the night.

“For since the creation of the world, His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made….” Romans 1:20