By Pamela Olivetree
The time of the singing of birds has come…Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away. ~ Song of Songs 2:10-13
I just lay there in a daze. It was 4:45 a.m. on a June morning, and I wasn’t sure if what I was hearing was real or not. Dozens, even hundreds of different kinds of birds were singing all at once. What were they doing? Was this a phenomenon? It was still dark and my body desperately wanted more sleep, but this was not normal. I had get out of bed, and do so right away.
Although my house is situated on a small lot in town, it does have many mature trees. Maybe all the local birds were congregated in my yard? I hurried to sit on the front steps, but didn’t see any birds at first. I just heard them. Chickadees, cardinals, robins, bluejays, sparrows, blackbirds…even seagulls! Many were songbirds I couldn’t differentiate. The sound in the air was incredibly deafening, with every kind of chirp, whistle, and tone imaginable all sung together in a jumbled, confusing mess. Or was it a mess?
Just sitting there trying to make sense of it all, a robin flew down from a tree and landed in the grass ahead of me. He chirped a note, cocked his head to the side, paused, and then chirped two more notes. He kept this up for a couple of minutes, alternating perfectly with a nearby cardinal’s song. It then struck me that this robin appeared to be listening to the cardinal, and pacing his unique, gifted song with the cardinal’s unique, gifted song.
This thought instantly shed some light on what I was hearing. Maybe it wasn’t a lot of different birds competing against each other to have their voices heard. Maybe it was instead a colossal chorus made up of small pockets of two or three kinds of birds, like this robin and cardinal, all listening to each other and trying to sing together in unison! From my vantage point the whole thing sounded confusing, but from God’s perspective He was surely enjoying it as a beautiful and harmonious “Love Song.”
It was then the prophecy of Christ came to mind: “He will not quarrel or strive, nor will anyone hear His voice shouting in the streets,” Matthew 12:19. In context, Jesus was not about pushing His teachings or “song,” if you will. He knew small pockets of His children would someday come after Him, singing His Song in unison. And out of these small relationships of just two or three, eventually the entire world will hear the music, “They will know we are Christians by our love, by our love…”.
I’m glad that I got up that morning to experience this early morning love song put on by the birds. It lasted only about 5 minutes before the intensity waned, and the birds went about their normal bird days, doing their normal bird things. It is something that for me, I’ve never heard happen again quite the same way.
Love listens!
He taught me how to sing the latest God-song, a praise-song to our God.
More and more people are seeing this: they enter the mystery,
abandoning themselves to God. ~Psalm 40:3 (MSG)