There’s a Reason We Can Rely on God.

November 20, 2024

My family gave me a bird feeder camera for my birthday this year.

It takes a bit of trial and error to pause the video, manipulate the screen capture, and get it presentable for the blog, but you get the idea.

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I’ve only had it a few months and up until this month, the local birds haven’t had much interest in the feeder. I believe late summer was just a slower time for feeding. Since it has gotten colder, more birds are coming to the feeder.

Watching the birds even when I’m not sitting near the feeder has been interesting. Some birds are very quick to fly in, grab a seed, and head back to the woods (kind of like me when I just want to grab something and bring it home to eat). A few will stand in the tray of seeds and eat for a while, then fly off. The smaller birds stand on the feeder and break the seeds into smaller pieces. I even had a downy woodpecker hang onto the feeder pole until he decided he had to get to the tray like everybody else if he wanted food.

So far, I’ve identified 8 bird species using the feeder. I knew most of them, but to confirm and record, I use the Merlin Bird ID app. As the app’s documentation says, it is “a machine-powered bird ID tool created by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Merlin uses computer vision and machine learning to identify birds in photos and sounds. Merlin learns to recognize bird species bases on sets of millions of photos and sounds submitted to eBird by birders around the world, archived in the Macaulay Library at the Cornel Lab. Merlin taps into over a billion records in the eBird citizen-science database to find out which birds are likely to be found in your vicinity on a given date. The 87,000 photos and sounds featured in Merlin are from thousands of photographers and sound recordists who submit their media to the Macaulay Library through eBird.”

I think of God’s attributes as I watch bird after bird come to the feeder.

Merlin has 87,000 photos and sounds. All based on over a billion records. Today, the app tells me there may be 111 species of birds near my location. That’s a lot of information about birds.

But compared to what God knows about birds, I’d say Merlin’s information is pretty general, at best.

Asaph, a worship leader during the time of David, wrote about God in the Psalms. In Psalms 50, he describes God as One who does not “need” for the people of Israel to offer Him sacrifices. You see, Israel was living in sin while superficially offering sacrifices to God that had no meaning to them. Their hearts were in the wrong place. Look what Asaph says in Psalm 50:11 when he tells Israel God’s heart.

“I know every bird in the mountains, and the insects in the fields are mine.” (NIV)

Unlike Merlin, God doesn’t need His creation to feed Him information. He knows on His own (because he created them), every bird in the mountains. Not just the names of species. Not just what birds are to be expected in a location on a given date. God knows every one of the birds.

If you are going through something and you wonder if God is aware. Believe me, He is aware. God knows everything about you. Everything that has happened to you in the past and everything that will happen to you in the future.

On top of that, God loves you.

He wants the best for you. He asks that you trust Him with whatever is going on in your life. You may not be comfortable doing that. You may not be patient enough for that. You may be used to relying on your own devices.

My prayer for you, and for me, is that we trust God and rely on Him for everything.