Saturday 21 September 2013

Young herring gull

Here in the garret where I spend time chilling out with Jesus before the day kicks off, this morning there came a seagull – a brown dappled teenager herring gull – just above my head, scavenging moss from the rim of the skylight.

I watched him, three feet above me.  In between the peckings and nibblings, we looked at each other, eye to eye.

And in the bird’s eye, I saw intelligence, and a quality that lifted my heart – call it gladness, contentment, happiness, something benign, something at peace with life and itself.  I do not think of seagulls as kind birds – fairly heartless, really – but in this bird’s eye, something that in a human eye always means kindness was there.

If a bird can be good, this bird was good.  And it can, of course, because God saw all that he had made, and pronounced it good.





5 comments:

Hawthorne said...

Wonderful! I love those rare one-to-one moments we sometimes get with God's creatures. I remember sitting under a rhododendron bush in Sandringham woods, having fled there to escape an awful day, when a Muntjac deer scampered out. It didn't realise I was there and stopped in its tracks. We had a big moment looking in each other's faces before it turned tail and ran off. Praise God for such magical moments!

Alice Y. said...

Yes! So beautiful. I think God calls us into the restoration-way, and when we allow ourselves to be drawn there we find ourselves kin with the others who belong to God, whether we are humans, birds, or any other kind of creature.

Pen Wilcock said...

:0) Hi friends - waving! xx

Janettessage.blogspot.com said...

Amen...so beautifully said!

Pen Wilcock said...

x Waving!