“The initial step for a soul to come to a knowledge of God is contemplation of nature.”
—Irenaeus (120-202 AD) [Quoted in “Teachings on Creation through the Ages,” The Green Bible, I-98.]
God made birdsong for human souls. Yes, birds twitter, chirp, and hoot in a symphony of life (as I appreciated during a recent riverside walk) to attract mates and make declarations of self, but they also speak to the souls of the species that God determined should listen to, think about, and pray thanks for these songs.
Bugs crawl and mammals walk; plants grow, transpire, and make life-giving oxygen, and all are part of God’s web of life, and together compose the variety he so loves. But birds have a unique role in communicating God’s wonders to us sometimes unhearing, unseeing human beings, for they twitter so much and flit so often in their colorful wake-up-the-morning sort of way.
If God desires to stimulate our senses to appreciate his life-giving, creative being-in- action, then birds—his multi-varied demonstrators of life—serve that role wonderfully.
