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For most of my adult life I’ve been a birdwatcher.
Birding, as its practitioners call it, is an interesting hobby. That’s because birds don’t stay still for very long.
If you’re trying to visit all 63 national parks in the United States and you haven’t yet made it to Bryce Canyon, you can be sure that Bryce Canyon is still there waiting for you.
But if you’re trying to tally up the longest possible life list of birds, you have to go out and find them. You also have to be fortunate.
More than 50 years ago I went birding with a skilled guide. She could hear and see and discern things in the deep woods that escape the typical person. I remember her saying, “Now, up in that tree there’s a Cerulean Warbler.”
Cerulean Warblers are tiny, active birds. They are light blue and white and have magically beautiful vocalizations.
Typically they pass through the Midwest for a few weeks in the spring and a few weeks in the fall, flying to and from their summer nesting grounds in Canada. The best time to see a Cerulean is on a bright spring morning, with the sun at one’s back, looking up at the highest treetops. That’s where they enjoy dining on insects.
On that morning years ago, I looked and looked where the guide was pointing. I could hear it. But I couldn’t see it.
If you’re birding with an expert guide, however, it’s allowable (at least in the minds of some birders) to mark down on your own list that you at least heard a distinct birdsong. Or perhaps you can include whatever the guide sees.
That’s exactly what I did. It was gratifying to record that I had been on a trip when the leader spotted a Cerulean Warbler.
Today I feel differently. Years ago, in fact, I deleted the Cerulean Warbler from my life list.
I am still waiting to see one for myself.
Maddeningly, I hear reports from time to time, year after year, that other birders have caught sight of a Cerulean. But I still haven’t been in the right place at the right time.
In that regard, knowing God is a bit like birding. If something is genuinely worth seeing or experiencing, it’s important to see and experience that something for yourself.
It may be that you grew up in a home that valued regular prayer. Perhaps your parents modeled caring for other families who were struggling. It’s a great blessing to have been nurtured in such a home. But did those values and behaviors ever become part and parcel of your own life?
It may be that your father was a courageous community leader. Perhaps your grandmother displayed heroic trust in God.
But when it comes to spiritual wholeness, there’s no such thing as hitchhiking on someone else’s experiences, “borrowing” their faith as if it were your own.
The only way to know if God is really trustworthy is to trust God for ourselves.
I’ve made peace with the possibility that I will come to the end of life having never spotted a Cerulean Warbler. I have only so many bright spring mornings left.
But any day of any year is the perfect time to do what matters infinitely more:
Taste and see that the Lord is good. See for yourself.