Wednesday, May 19: Bird brains!

I park my pick-up truck right outside my door and it is not more than a few feet away from the largest window in the apartment. Lately, I have been watching a robin spend an inordinate amount of time looking at himself in the side-view mirror of my truck. The bird does more than just look…he pecks at the mirror, and additionally, poops all over the side of the truck. This is occurring on a daily basis. Every once in a while, he gets bored with that reflection and flies into the glass window of the apartment, pecking against that glass. I couldn’t figure out what he was doing, thinking that he was just stupidly in love with his own reflection.


A friend explained it to me today, and upon researching on the internet, I found a great population of other people enduring the same, odd-bird behavior. An on-line ornithologist gave the same explanation that my friend did. Male robins and cardinals are prone to this behavior, though it is not limited to only those birds. Springtime seems to be the most common time for that behavior as it is mating season, but what is the consensus opinion is that the bird is doing battle with another male…in the mirror. The poop trail is his marking of territory. Suggested solutions were varied and involved putting a bag over the mirror, a car cover, or even a solution of dishwashing soap placed on the mirror to make it more opaque. Of course, the easiest solution is to hit the stupid bird with a broom until he quits breathing!


Birds are not known for their incredibly large brains! As humans, our brains are much closer to the capacity of those birds than they are to the capacity of God’s brain. I bet God looks at us in much the same way. “You are fighting against yourself again!” How often do we fall into that same trap? With God’s perfect plan for our lives, He still allows us to choose our own way. Yet when we choose the wrong path, He faithfully and patiently brings us back to the path He designed especially for each of us. Just like the bird, our biggest mistakes usually take place when we are egotistically looking at ourselves, even when we don't realize that is what we are looking at! If we keep our eyes on God, we won’t even begin to worry about our enemy in the mirror.


Yes, we do fight against powers and principalities, the demons of Satan. Yet it doesn’t really matter what battle lies in front of you. If your eyes are on yourself rather than God, you are destined to lose the battle every time.


22 You must not fear them, for the LORD your God Himself fights for you.’
Deuteronomy 3:22


Though we seem to think that the battles in our own lives are so big that we have earned the right to worry about them, in truth, we are no better than the bird pecking against a mirror. Trust God! He loves you so much that He desires to protect you and do battle for you! We are soldiers in His army and He has the power to defeat anyone and anything!