Today was a pleasant peek at the upcoming summer. When I walked Penelope we saw a lone buzzard in the clear blue sky, winding his way up the wind thermal stairs. I ate my breakfast perched in the porch swing enjoying the morning as it waked. I got hot in the swing when the sun hit the porch. The songbirds were all singing happily around the neighborhood, performing a yard symphony accompanied by the soft tintinnabulations of the wind chimes. Big bumblebees and wasps buzzing around the pansies are singing solos in the yard symphony. Another wonderful day I’ve been gifted by the Lord and I’m grateful to experience its beauty.

Father Sky took his time with clouding the sky today, laying his white pastel stick on the blue sky cavas mid-afternoon and dragging it across the heavens to overcast the sky with a vanilla white layer of thick clouds, thinning them out in a few places to let the sky and sun peek through. I’m hoping he’ll thin the clouds so I can view the pageant of sunset tonight.

After supper, I was perched back in my porch swing, eagerly watching for the sunset when twilight entered my neighborhood and brought the flock of cardinals. The cardinals are so beautiful at dusk, they visit the feeders all over the yard and stay till darkness comes. I counted 12 crimson colored males with their fawn-brown female partners. The last two days a flock of brown headed cowbirds mixed with some grackles have come to the feeders right at day’s end. The male grackles are so handsome when the fading sunlight kisses their iridescent blue heads. A group of cowbirds is called a corral and a group of grackles is called a plague but when they travel in large flocks together they are called New World blackbirds.

This flock of the black birds are mesmerizing when they fly, riding the waves of the sky, undulating in different patterns, swirling and swooping, coordinated and quickly changing directions without colliding. Even Penelope watches them when they take to the air and fly. My flock is small but out west there have been flocks of millions of birds. In 2011 a flock of birds in Eagle Bluff, Missouri, was estimated to contain 5 million black birds! I bet the noise was deafening. Imagine taking a trip with 5 million family members and friends! This noisy little flock in my yard has been roosting in the bamboo forest every night but I don’t see them till late afternoon each day.

Scripture in the Bible tells us the birds were cared for by God and they were a part of his creation. The birds were singing so gloriously this morning, their little hearts beating with happiness. Charles Spurgeon said, “The early morning hour should be dedicated to praise: do not the birds set us the example?” I think the birds are singing their prayers as the day wakes, grateful to be alive. We should do the same each morning, singing praise for waking with breath to experience another day, bowing our heads in gratitude for all the wondrous blessings of our lives.

When I wasn’t watching the birds on the feeders today, I was reading in one of my quote books looking for inspiration. I came across a quote my friend says she has taped to her desk at work. It’s by John Wesley and is good advice for all of us. I’m copying it in sentence form. “Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as you can.”

We can’t save the world ourselves but working together, doing “all the good we can to all the people we can,” can change the world. All the little good deeds can add up and cause a big change. We might not change the world but we can change the trajectory of someone who needs Christ in their life. The Lord wants us to live in kindness and love, sharing our faith with others and through our words and actions bring others into the kingdom of God’s grace. Let’s all do all the good we can, to all the people we can, as long as we can. Let’s sing God’s praise as unabashedly as the songbirds each morning.

“The reason birds can fly and we can’t is simply because they have perfect faith, for to have faith is to have wings.” — Rabindranath Tagore