Most mornings at about 5:30 AM, you’ll find me in my yard sitting on a metal bistro chair watching God’s creation wake up. The sun hasn’t risen yet but it’s already light.
I am trying to blend into the scene with a dark-green lawn in front of me and a crabapple tree at my left. That tree is about twenty feet high, its branches are leafed with everything that gives cover for sparrows, robins, house finches, mourning doves, and other occasional species that visit with me as the day begins.
I am praying when I am watching and listening to what’s happening around me. Maybe God is speaking a message today that only I should hear.
Morning birds, sure! But I also hear the muted roar of a train a half-mile from me going somewhere on purpose plus the hum of cars and trucks motoring up and down the highway which courses through the center of my little town. Everyone going or coming from work. Everything sounding busy.
All this motion stirs the air and comes to me like a kind of music. Each morning the composition is different. Robins add their reedy woodwind effect every now and then. House sparrows chirp because that’s all they can do. A mourning dove laments about something as it coos. A cardinal lifts its clarinet and plays songs other cardinals from down the streets hear and join in on. Street traffic adds percussion and bass. There’s a kind of jazz this morning.
The redbird is the loudest. Some fifty feet away from me, a bobbing rush of red perched in a leafy-green oak in my neighbor’s yard sings again. Give me a cardinal singing anytime to lift my spirits!
These are voices through which the Creator speaks and this chorus has me listening closely. What I hear is the Creator asking me to join in with whatever voice I can find within me this morning. So, I clear my throat… and sing!