What the birds know

"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?" — Matthew 6:26

The cardinal was at the feeder again this morning. He has been coming at the same time for weeks now, just before the other birds arrive, as if he prefers to eat alone. I understand the impulse. Earl was the one who named every creature that crossed the yard. He would have had a name for this one by the second day. I have let the bird stay nameless, which is not a decision I made so much as a thing I have let stand.

He sat on the rim of the feeder in the early light and turned his head the way they do, one eye at a time, as if he were considering the morning from two different angles before committing to an opinion. Then he ate. Then he left. The whole visit took maybe four minutes. He did not seem worried about whether there would be seed tomorrow.

I watched him from the kitchen window with my coffee cooling in my hands and I thought about provision. Not the large kind. Not the dramatic rescue, the last-minute phone call, the check that arrives the day the bill is due. The small steady kind that shows up at the same feeder at the same hour without announcement and without explanation.

The feeder is a simple thing. I fill it on Saturdays. Sunflower seed, black oil, the kind the man at Southern States told me would bring the best variety. I fill it and the birds come, and I do not know their schedules but they seem to know mine. There is something in that. Something about faithfulness that has nothing to do with understanding and everything to do with showing up.

Sunday mornings are slow in this house. Church is not until eleven and the hours before it are wide open and mine. I sit at the table with the Bible and the coffee and the quiet. Biscuit is asleep on his rug in the next room. The house settles into itself the way old houses do when nobody is asking anything of them. And the cardinal comes to the feeder and eats what is there and does not worry about what is not.

I have spent a lot of my life worrying about what is not there. The phone call that has not come. The test result I have not received. The prayer that has not been answered in the shape I asked for. I am seventy-seven years old and I still do this. I sit at the table in the quiet of a Sunday morning with everything I need within arm's reach, and I worry about Tuesday.

The cardinal does not worry about Tuesday. I do not think this is because he is simple. I think it might be because he is paying attention to the right morning.

Lord, teach me to eat what is here.