Lucas bought me a bird book for Mother’s Day one year. This was not your average Audubon Society coffee table slab. On the side of the book is a speaker, a push button and a tiny screen. Each page in the book pictures a North American songbird with the usual blurb about its range, habits, and call. Under the bird is a number. When you put the correct number on the screen then push the button, you will hear that particular bird, actual recordings taken by the ornithology lab at Cornell University.
I’ve heard the ugly squawk of blue jays all my life. It seems fitting for this thug of a bird which bullies smaller birds and steals nests. I’d been hearing a bird with a clear wooden whistle call for years. I was positive it was a cuckoo, based solely on the cuckoo clocks I have heard, but as soon as I checked the cuckoo’s sound in my book, I knew I was mistaken. On a whim one day, I punched in the blue jay’s number, wondering why in the world it was considered a songbird. Suddenly a wooden whistle came floating out of the speakers. This was a blue jay? This was the sound I had become so enamored with? It had never dawned on me that a bird could make more than one sound.
So blue jays were not the kindest birds in the forest. I loved hearing that loud, clear call of theirs, and the fact that a blue jay could make such a lovely sound was strangely uplifting. I knew I would miss it if suddenly it disappeared.
How many times do we let our judgment of people, especially people we disagree with or have dealt with in less than ideal circumstances, keep us from seeing anything good about them? How many times do we filter our views, not through the rose-colored glasses of kindness, but through a specialty lens we grind ourselves, one of malice that blocks out the good and magnifies the bad? Ounce for ounce, hummingbirds are among the most vicious creatures on earth, actually attempting to impale one another on those long, sword-like beaks as they fight over the feeders we humans put out, yet we ooh and aah over them. I really don’t think that the people with whom I have personality conflicts are actually out to murder me, so why can’t I see any of the pluses in their characters?
Isn’t there a human blue jay in your life? Find that person today and take off the blinders. Do something kind; say something kind. Instead of pushing the button that releases a squawk, push the button that brings beautiful music. Give him a chance to show his good side. Isn’t that what you wish he would do for you?
The wicked one craves evil; his neighbor gets no mercy from him, Prov 21:10.
Love suffers long and is kind…does not behave itself unseemly, seeks not its own, is not provoked, does not keep track of evil…bears all things, believes all things, and hopes all things…love never fails, 1 Cor 13:4-7.
Dene Ward
I’ve heard the ugly squawk of blue jays all my life. It seems fitting for this thug of a bird which bullies smaller birds and steals nests. I’d been hearing a bird with a clear wooden whistle call for years. I was positive it was a cuckoo, based solely on the cuckoo clocks I have heard, but as soon as I checked the cuckoo’s sound in my book, I knew I was mistaken. On a whim one day, I punched in the blue jay’s number, wondering why in the world it was considered a songbird. Suddenly a wooden whistle came floating out of the speakers. This was a blue jay? This was the sound I had become so enamored with? It had never dawned on me that a bird could make more than one sound.
So blue jays were not the kindest birds in the forest. I loved hearing that loud, clear call of theirs, and the fact that a blue jay could make such a lovely sound was strangely uplifting. I knew I would miss it if suddenly it disappeared.
How many times do we let our judgment of people, especially people we disagree with or have dealt with in less than ideal circumstances, keep us from seeing anything good about them? How many times do we filter our views, not through the rose-colored glasses of kindness, but through a specialty lens we grind ourselves, one of malice that blocks out the good and magnifies the bad? Ounce for ounce, hummingbirds are among the most vicious creatures on earth, actually attempting to impale one another on those long, sword-like beaks as they fight over the feeders we humans put out, yet we ooh and aah over them. I really don’t think that the people with whom I have personality conflicts are actually out to murder me, so why can’t I see any of the pluses in their characters?
Isn’t there a human blue jay in your life? Find that person today and take off the blinders. Do something kind; say something kind. Instead of pushing the button that releases a squawk, push the button that brings beautiful music. Give him a chance to show his good side. Isn’t that what you wish he would do for you?
The wicked one craves evil; his neighbor gets no mercy from him, Prov 21:10.
Love suffers long and is kind…does not behave itself unseemly, seeks not its own, is not provoked, does not keep track of evil…bears all things, believes all things, and hopes all things…love never fails, 1 Cor 13:4-7.
Dene Ward
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