Just A Bird
It was just an accident.
A tiny little Cocatiel who hopped around - well, walked, really - and sat on your
shoulder and pulled on your earring or hair and wolf-whistled during Bible study and
carried on trying to join in during worship at the home of her loving owner. The little
bird was greatly loved by her owner. That night, the little bird was kept in the
bedroom for safety, since she had no cage. The kids were told not to go in there. One
disobeyed, and crushed the little winged creature to death under an accidental -yet
disobedient - misstep. He was mortified. He was twelve.
The owner, who had seen a lifetime of tragedy, loss and death, cried bitterly and
openly, inconsolable. For you see, the bird was a joy in an otherwise painful and dark
world. It was a little ray of God to her. A thing of innocence.
The kids' reactions were mixed. Most stood by helpless, not knowing what to do.
The shock for me was hearing of one saying, "What's the big deal? It's only a stupid
bird."
In those words, I heard the voice of an entire generation. In that evening's
events, I heard God speaking about disobedience. And in that bird, I heard God speaking
about innocence and loss.
First, disobedience. This is a generation without rules, other than convenience and
"what's right for me". It is a generation reaping the destruction from that horrible
breach of God's laws.
We so wrongly look at God's Law and say, "It's just too hard. God loves me, right?
But the law seems so cold. So restrictive. So impractical." But why is it there? For
our protection. The law is fixed. Like gravity, it just is. "The soul that sins...it shall
die." Why? Because sin destroys. God didn't say "don't" because he enjoys seeing us
restricted. He said it because sin kills. My generation, who largely discarded the law
of God in favor of pleasure and self, only partly reaped the results. It is this
generation where the full holocaust of disobedience and sin is clearly bearing fruit. Ask
why God gave us the law, and then look at the consequences of raising kids to
disregard that law: AIDS. Drug abuse. Kids who murder their parents.
Kids who don't care.
Kids who can't feel compassion, or pain, choosing rather to numb themselves with
drugs and sex and violence.
We didn't mean to raise this generation to turn out that way. Neither did the
young boy mean to kill the bird. He just wanted what he wanted, to do what he
wanted even when he was told not to. But you see, we're so bound to ourselves, so
narrow that our first thought is always about "me". What will God do to me? How will
I suffer? But it wasn't the boy's bird that was killed. Someone else paid for his
disobedience.
This generation is paying a high price for our disobedience! Sin is never just about
me. Everyone pays, as David found out in the whirlwind of violence his adultery and
murder produced for generations to follow. "You have sown the wind, and will reap the
whirlwind."
Next, there's the comment I heard. "It's just a stupid bird." A generation who
cannot feel for the least of God's creation will likely feel little for people, either. "It's
just a fetus." "He's just a nigger." "They're just a faggot." Do you see? We're seeing now
the full fruition of disobedience in our nation: Social numbness. A people so
pleasure-mad that we're little different than wealthy Romans who attended the
arena slaughter of undesirables and Christians as a social sport. Actually we still have
them. They're called "talk shows". When I see cross-dressing strippers, a 16 year old
who has had 30 women in his bed, and partners who videotape sex applauded wildly
like heroes, I know we're way beyond the point of no return now. The intolerable is
now accepted. Blatant lawbreaking is accepted, excused. How can children raised by
Tabloid TV not be numbed and without any sense of truth and reality?
I'll never forget the dream I once had of people who were bloody, dismembered
and nearly dead. I said, "What's the worst thing about the Antichrist?" "He doesn't let
you feel", one answered. TV remotes are like a morphine drip! Watch one minute of
suffering on the news, turn the channel, there's comedy central. Don't feel.
In my work with abuse victims, numbness - not feeling their losses - is the worst
kind of suffering there is. Pain proves we're alive. In my work with satanic criminal
groups, I see numbness to the full measure. To them, children are animals to be caged
and killed - and, like the bird, something innocent to be crushed under their unfeeling
feet.
One of my greatest agonies about working for children and families of abuse in
the system is how the numbness is there, too, in the system. Children are for many
just case files. Lose a case, return the child to the abuser. Oh, well. Next case on the
docket? "It's just a stupid bird." "You can't get personally involved." One of my greatest
griefs is knowing the extent of abuse and slaughter of innocents and knowing so much
of the church is turned to Holy Ghost Partying rather than feeling God's pain and doing
something!
No, it wasn't just a bird to me. It was a symbol of innocence. Our President spoke
after the Oklahoma City bombing about our loss of national innocence. It's been lost
for years, Mr. President, we just can't feel anything but major shocks anymore, and
then just briefly. Click. Back to Comedy Central and the Playboy channel. We've got to
wake up!
Last week, I was gardening, when a bird hit my sliding glass window. I ran over,
praying it wasn't dead. Now, this may sound strange to those who know I'm a devoted
blackbird killer. Well, they're predators. They kill and eat smaller, helpless birds. But
this was just a defenseless little creature. I picked it up, half- dead. I prayed for
healing. It was dying. I wept. An eye opened. After a while, praying all the time, he
managed to perch one foot on my finger and I held it steady. There it stayed for a
half hour as I talked to him, prayed for him and it slowly regained consciousness. He
did not fear. Then I put him on the ground, and he hopped, then flew to a little apricot
tree in the corner of my yard, then after lingering a while, flew away.
I wept because it was a deeply tender moment in a brutally callous world. I wept
because he was so helpless - so dependent on my kindness, so vulnerable to my possible
brutality. And I wept because I heard Jesus say, "How can you think, if you feel so
deeply for that little bird, that I don't love and care for you a thousand times more?"
Does He really care that much? Yes! And if He does, what kind of agony does he feel
for the battered and defenseless of the world? And knowing He does, how can I ever
turn away from the call to bring healing to all I can in His Name?