Hi readers,

From time to time I like to encourage new writers by asking them to write a devotional that I can share on my blog post. The following is one done by our friend George Bruce. Enjoy!

Little Green Bird

A few weeks ago my family and I went camping at Hunting Island State Park. It is a beautiful place to relax in a hammock, by the campfire, or at the shore listening to the chorus of the waves. These settings promote the enjoyment of God’s world outside our little worlds, our little schedules, and the expectations that we are willing to climb under and shoulder.

While at the campsite one day I noticed a oddly beautiful, or might I say, cute little bird. I’d never seen one quite like it. It was a tiny green bird with shades of greenish yellow strategically wiped along the sides of its body, giving it an eerie, almost alien camouflage that was subtle and yet a bit overdone. It was as if this creature was from another forest, island, or world where  it would normally be nearly invisible to the untrained eye, but here it was before me, apparently displaced and out of some natural order so that I might notice it. I realize that I am no student of birds or bird watching, but how had this one escaped me for half a century? What breeze had it blown in on? I couldn’t guess where it was from or what its name was … But God knows.

This unique little bird, the likes of which I’ve never seen before or since, was created thousands of years ago (or should I say, its kind was) by the voice of God. As He spoke the creation of the entire universe into existence God paused for a brief moment and muttered something along the lines of … “And let there be a green little bird with shades of greenish yellow, one rarely seen, that bounces as it walks, chirps gently, is small enough to fit into the palm of a man’s hand, and causes a man to wonder and think of Me, as he marvels at the detail I seemingly waste on the smallest of my creatures … for I am God” or something like that. And there was a little green bird.

The extravagant detail that God has woven into His creation in all its grandeur and all its meekness are evidence of the great care He has for it. Words fail me, but how is it that I worry? How might I slip past His concern? Are His thoughts too few of me? Might I escape His notice? How disturbingly grand an idea it is that I would think myself less in God’s eyes than that green little bird!