Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? (Mt 6:26)
I’ve begun to look at the above scripture passage in a new light. It’s been one of my favorites for a very long time but now it has even more meaning for me. For the past year or so I’ve been waiting for a particular door to open for me but it just wasn’t happening. Week after week and month after month would go by with nothing. At the same time, it seemed as if just about everyone else I knew was having doors thrown wide open for them left and right. But not me. When would my turn come?
This happened even in the simplest of things. Take, for example, the way my husband would see hummingbirds at our backyard hummingbird feeder seemingly all the time. It was effortless for him to look out the window and see one of those beautiful little creatures hovering around the feeder. He would call to me but by the time I got to the window, the hummingbird would be gone. Frustrated, I completely gave up looking. It was another door that refused to open for me, and I pretended not to care about the hummingbirds anymore.
Until one day when my husband and I were overlooking the gardens in the backyard. We were standing about four feet from the hummingbird feeder when my husband gently nudged my elbow with his. “Don’t move!”, he whispered. Perched on the feeder right in front of us was a beautiful green-blue hummingbird dipping its beak into the opening and sipping on the nectar inside. We watched in amazement as it kept on sipping despite our nearness. After a few minutes, it fluttered to another opening and then yet a third, taking a long drink each time. It was glorious!
Unable to resist trying to capture this amazing moment, I slowly moved my hand toward my pocket to grab my phone so I could snap a picture. I was just putting my fingers around the phone when the hummingbird must have sensed the movement. It fluttered above the feeder then turned and sped away – right between our heads which had been bent together watching. It came so close to us that we could hear and feel the vibration in our ears!
“There,” my husband said, smiling at me. “Does that make up for all the other times?” It did that and much more. I got God’s message loud and clear. My obsession with seeing the hummingbirds had run parallel to my obsession with seeing open doors. It would not happen how and when I wanted it to; it would happen how and when God wanted it. It was almost as if I could hear the heavenly Father saying to me, “Just as you must wait patiently to see the hummingbirds, you must wait patiently to see the open doors. I will send them when it is best for you and when I do, it will be far more wonderful than you ever expected.”
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