SONGBIRD!

‘Meadowlark’ by Jeffery Hamilton on Unsplash.

It’s SPRING!!!  Flowers appear on the earth; the season of singing has come, the cooing of doves is heard in our land.  Song of Songs 2:12.

I was at Ziggler’s art store in Tulsa, suddenly a songbird started to sing.  It was beautiful and unexpected and moved me to write the following poem!

Ziggler’s Songbird
The song meandered 
Through the merchandise
Laid wait for me

Like the breeze on a 
Hot day it sent
Me briefly to
Another place.    MRB

‘It sent me briefly to another place’.  Did you know that researchers have proven that the song of a bird ‘is the best antidote to our stressful lives’.  In an article in The Guardian, by Stephen Moss, author and naturalist, scientists at the University of Surrey have been studying the “restorative benefits of birdsong”, testing whether it really does improve our mood. They discovered that, of all the natural sounds, bird songs and calls were those most often cited as helping people recover from stress and allowing them to restore and refocus their attention.  This is perhaps because a songbird will only sing when it feels safe!  

Click on the link below and listen for yourself!

The World’s Most Beautiful Bird Songs. Bird Kind.

Songbirds learn their songs from their parents.  Each bird has its own repertoire of songs.  About a third of these have only a single song.  Another 20% have a repertoire of five songs.  But the winner is the brown thrashers who have more than 2,000 songs!  And then there is the Lyrebird who can mimic other birds’ songs and noises it hears in its environment like the sound of a car alarm, a camera shutter or even a chain saw!  These birds work hard at their singing, it is said that a yellowhammer may chant what sounds like ‘a little bit of bread and no cheese’ 3,000 times a day or a half a million times in a season!  (British Library) 

WELL, biologically speaking, they are highly motivated to keep other males away from their territory and lure the females by their musical finesse.  As one author put it, ‘What we hear is the males of each species saying, “Keep out!” to every other male, and “Come in!” to every female.’  

What do you hear when you hear a songbird sing?  Remember Job 12:7 from my intro?  ‘But ask the animals, and they will teach you, or the birds in the sky, and they will tell you.’  What are they telling us?    

If you read Psalm 148, you will find that everything that God has made including you, are commanded to praise God.  This praise is for the most part silent!  Psalm 19 makes this clear, ‘The heavens (and everything God has made) declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.  Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they reveal knowledge.  They have no speech; they use no words; no sound is heard from them. Yet their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world. 
Psalm 19:1-4.  

Everything God made ‘declares and proclaims the glory of God’, in other words, EVERYTHING PRAISES GOD’, (expresses approval of or admiration for) God, their voice and words are everywhere, but they use no words or sounds.  Except the songbird and you and I who have been given the ability to sing!   

The songbird sings His praise without words saying, isn’t God great!  Isn’t He amazing!  He gave me a syrinx that makes it possible for me to sing two different songs at the same time!!!!! 

TAKE A LESSON FROM THE SONGBIRD and let us ‘Sing to the LORD a new song; sing to the LORD, all the earth. Psalm 96:1.

And remember this beautiful fact, GOD IS SINGING OVER YOU!!! 
The Lord thy God in the midst of thee is mighty; he will save, he will rejoice over thee with joy; he will rest in his love, he will joy over thee with singing.  Zephaniah 3:17. NKJV.

AND, ‘God inhabits the praises of His people!’  Psalm 22:3.