Today He Sent Me Bluebirds

                                                         He sees the sparrows when they fall.     

He hears the righteous when they call

He counts the hairs upon my head.

By Him all living things are fed.

If God so clothes the grass and flower,

He surely cares for me each hour. 

He surely cares for me each hour. 

I need to be getting ready for church but the bluebirds are flying and I must stop and watch them. I wasn’t expecting this. Years ago, when our family moved to the great Navajo reservation, I met my first bluebird. In a little settlement in the Pine Springs area, in a small hogan church, we sang songs and taught Bible stories to beautiful little children attending the nearby boarding school. They were there out of choice. The families lived a distance from the day school and so had chosen to send their children to the boarding school each week. And it was here, among the juniper trees that I saw my first bluebird, the color of turquoise flitting in and out of sight, beautiful and bright and capturing my heart.  

There is no falsity about a bluebird. Their color stands out boldly against the brown of the desert or the green of the juniper trees. They do not hide. They cannot.  God has made them bright and blue as if to say, ‘There, see now what I have done. I have given you a thing of beauty.’ 

I have been waiting for the bluebirds for six months, ever since I moved back to the high country. In the quietness of my mind, I have thought of them and hoped to see them, for they remind me that God deals with us individually, not simply in general terms. There are those who view God with a faraway understanding. They see Him as an impersonal God who directs things from afar and has no time to minister to the individual. But God is not like that. 

 Many times, as I ran down the cinder road, these past months, I would ask God to show me a bluebird. It was not just for a pleasant memory, but a sort of reassurance that in this chaotic world certain things remain untouched, that bluebirds still fly in the high country, and God still ‘deals in the affairs of men’. It’s the knowing that in our greatest joys and our deepest sorrows, God remains. 

And then, in the quietness of a Sunday morning,  he sent me bluebirds, flocks of bluebirds, flying about and perching on the water trough. I stood and rejoiced and knew that yes, my God cares. He sees me, standing alone in the desert and He sent me bluebirds. 

“Oh yes! Thank you!”  I spoke it aloud and tears ran down my cheeks. I thought of the happy blessings He bestows and was thankful and I thought of the sad times  He allows and was thankful. I thought of the people I rejoice to see daily and those I long for, of those I am privileged to hold tight and of those I yearn to hold. I stood, near the corral, looking at all the bluebirds, thanking God for every one.

Walking to the house, I mulled over the goodness of God in ministering to me on this beautiful Sunday morning. Into the kitchen I went and poured myself some coffee. I was alone this Sunday morning which was unusual. Usually my husband and I are getting ready together and chatting as we do. But he was spending special time hunting with our son and I was happy for them. I walked to the kitchen door which leads to the back verandah. I would look out on the Painted Desert this morning.  I opened the door wide to let in the morning sunshine—–and there he was.

Standing outside my door, preening in the light, was my very own bluebird. I could hardly believe my eyes. God surprised me again. He gives so generously – ‘in good measure, pressed down and shaken together and running over’. My heart swelled with gratitude. My Heavenly Father loves me. Today He sent me bluebirds.

Behold, the fowls of the air, they sow not neither do they reap, nor gather into barns, yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they? …Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow. They toil not, neither do they spin. Yet I say unto you, that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed as one of these. Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field which today is, and tomorrow is cast into the oven, shall He not clothe you, O ye of little faith?