Feeding the Birds

Walking across campus today I looked up and the familiar tower of Duke Chapel stood up tall against the skyline. This view in itself was nothing new; more often than not I’m scared I’ll just get used to seeing that Gothic masterpiece. This time, however, I saw a small group of birds fluttering near the pinnacle of the tower. All the time I never stopped walking; I just watched them fly a short distance before disappearing into one of the shadowed alcoves. Nothing about the birds stood out to me; they were not colorful, they did not sing, and I certainly couldn’t tell what species they were. In that moment, however, none of that mattered. I witnessed something older than the stones of Duke Chapel, older than its foundation, and more ancient than the concept of higher education and university life. I saw birds flying.

Every day we walk past the mundane, ignoring it all out of repetitious habit. Squirrels bark from trees while those same trees sway in a breeze. Bells in a church tower ring off in the distance; your baby makes those same indefinable sounds; clouds block out the Sun giving you an instant of shade; that same Sun beams down in perfect harmony with an atmosphere that allows for perfect, 75 degree comfort while you rest on soft grass. You take a step to perform action; you sleep, eat, taste, swallow, blink, sweat, shiver, burp, hiccough, and laugh. You hug, touch, brush, kiss, sigh, cry, and smile. You work, build, think, write, copy, cut, paste, ponder, get bored, have a drink, and do it all over again. We pass our lives in an infinitude of moments that make up the mundane, each moment giving way to the one before while we sit trapped in the process, missing each moment as we wish for the next and never seeing the miracles of every, fleeting second.

We go to school for the job we’ll one day have; we date for the spouse we’ll one day win; we try to have children for the family we’ll one day see; we build schools for the education the future can share; we earn money for the retirement we hope to earn; we work ourselves into the dirt for a dream that doesn’t exist and a reality we’re never meant to witness. Sometimes it is good to look to the future; not all the above examples are necessarily negative. In each instance, however, there is something to be missed while we want what we don’t yet have. I walk to school worrying about tests, papers, grades, acceptance, worth, value, jobs, and degrees, forgetting all about the fact that I’m here, at Duke University, receiving an education I don’t deserve for a future I can’t begin to imagine.

I know we all do this; we look to tomorrow while we worry about today. I believe somewhere in this human tendency lies the hope of heaven, when all these things will truly pass from our memories. In the meantime we must continue to hope. In the meantime we must strive to fill every second with meaning and intent. Worrying and plotting or just constantly wishing for tomorrow will only make us miss it when it becomes today. Just stop and notice the mundane. While we go about our works, earning money and stressing ourselves into the grave, the birds still fly like they always have. And their heavenly Father feeds them. Are we not much more than they?