Sights & Sounds

It is a lovely warm day outside. The sun filters through my window blinds and the air seems still as I watch cars and people go by. A gentle breeze now arises, trees begin to wave. Their branches swoop and arch in a silent elegant dance witnessed by a lone black-and-white warbler perched on my window sill... myself in the background. The bird is quite small in size- no more than five inches, perhaps weighing half an ounce- with distinctive white flecks designing the medial aspect of both its wings. Having a white throat makes it female... or is it a black throat... no; black is male, I remember now. Though not the most vocal of the thirty-something or so species, this one has a high-pitched song. Yet it gazes mutely. A piece of paper drifts across the grass unto the street. At that precise moment a car happens around a bend in the road, narrowly missing a squirrel that carelessly darts into its path. Other squirrels continue racing around the red oak, apparently with no care in the world. My eyes stay fixed on the scene before me while my mind wanders to the book of Job - chapters 38 & 39. How amazing God's creation is! Birds of the air and lilies in the field have no cares; lions hunt their prey and feed their young; ravens are tended to. Oh how He commands the morning and causes the dawn to know its place ...

Out of the corner of my eye I notice a police car parked in front of the store facing my window. The shop's banners flap noisily in the warm wind as a frail old black lady makes her way through its glass door. So thin is her body that she appears child-like. Sometime ago she had passed me on the pavement close to my building. Sounds of men speaking in a foreign tongue reach my ears, but are immediately drowned out by the droning of an airplane flying high overhead. Tuning out these external diversions I find myself comforted by familiar sounds within: the constant drip drip of the kitchen tap in steady tempo; the old Dell laptop humming to life from its position on the dining table, a lovely warm brown mahogany wood with a solid green wrought iron pedestal style base. Creaking of ancient stairs followed by the distant knocking on a door somewhere on the floor above. Pots and pans clang and clatter as someone goes about making breakfast. Sights and sounds of life. Senses awaken. It feels good to be alive. Good to be able to feel the pulse of nature every day.

The earth is the LORD’s and the fullness thereof, the world and those who dwell therein - Psalm 24v1