Birdbrain

 "Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?" Matthew 6:26

    As the leaves gleam their golden hues and daylight wanes, along come the advertising campaigns which surround the Christmas - oops, sorry! "Holiday" - season. 

    The one I received today from a gardening center had not one item referencing our beautiful Savior's incarnation in Bethlehem, but it did have a page or two devoted to a favorite bird of mine, the black capped chickadee. So, I paused to peruse.

    There, within the description of this spritely bird's winter feeding habits, I found the glory of God. I learned these birds hide food in the fall, which they intend to eat much later come winter. To do this, the chickadee uses its keen spatial memory to record the precise location of thousands of snacks. The hippocampus (the memory center of the bird's brain) actually expands by 30% to accommodate this geo-caching foray. Then, in spring, the bird's brain returns to its normal capacity, erasing the now unnecessary memory of his hidden seeds. 

    The irony of uncovering this miraculous tidbit of creation in the center of a secular circular, which ostensibly denied any nod to God's gift to the world, wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger, was not lost on me. For the wisdom of God, as revealed by a bird's brain, is foolishness to the world at large. 

    If a chickadee could pause long enough to be interviewed, do you suppose he would, with fluffed feathers on a proud breast, declare that he had provided for himself by his own strength? Or would he, birdbrain though he has, give glory where glory is due - to God alone?

    For all the boasting man does about all he supposedly knows, for him to say that birds evolved from reptiles which initially evolved in the sea millions of years ago, showcases just what a birdbrain he is. Come to think of it, the bird is wiser than he.

"Where is the wise person? Where is the teacher of the law? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?...But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong."1 Corinthians 1: 20, 27