Of morning songs and evening prayers

Dan, Wendy and their three daughters, Lily, Chloe and Em are back in the states looking for a home and jobs. For the past four years Dan has been pastor of an English speaking church in Beijing, China. It has been a grand adventure and an opportunity for the whole family to become a part of another culture. Dan loves being a pastor and hopes to find a church where he can exercise his gifts. Wendy, fluent in Japanese, with experience in the corporate world, would love to find work, too. Dan has been our friend since his days as a student at the seminary where Michael was a professor. Now he and his family are here at Montreat doing camp for the girls and themselves as they seek to find their new home.
Sitting on the deck last night, we were watching the sunset and the moonrise. Venus shone brightly as the stars began to appear. The moon was wreathed in a mist and the air was cool and damp. As we sat, my heart settled down and my soft evening prayers began to fly upwards toward the brilliant gilt edged clouds. It had been a hectic day full of work and traffic jams of many kinds. I felt frayed and tattered but the evening sounds and sights worked their magic and I began to see and hear the world around me uncluttered by a need to do anything or go anywhere. Swifts were flying through the air gathering their evening meal and they were soon joined by the bats dining on mosquitoes.
I gave the girls wide mouthed Mason jars so they could catch fireflies. Dan and Wendy spoke of the pollution, the brown hazy air that surrounds Beijing and the ambient light that blocks out the starlight. The saddest thing to me, however, was not pollution (we have our share) or the lack of starlight (go to any large city here) but the loss of songbirds. Mao ordered all the songbirds in the city killed during his tenure as ruler of China. There are no songbirds in Beijing.
Every morning during spring, summer and fall, we wake to the sound of birdsong. The rooster is not the only one with a morning composition to sing. Cardinals, bluebirds, indigo buntings, wrens, finches, even the brash caw of crows give us a sweet transition from sleep to waking. I cannot imagine a world without songbirds... morning sounds that do not include songs that are sung for pure joy by creatures other than us.
From our beginning times, when God said, “...let birds fly above the earth... and let birds multiply upon the earth...” we have had winged song slip sliding through the air that surrounds us, often unheard and unnoticed, but there nonetheless. I am reminded that the voice of God can be heard singing in these multicolored creations that exist as pure pleasure in a world of utility and multi-tasking. Give me ears to hear today, Lord, the songs you send me. Let me lift my voice in song to join birds in praise to the One who gave me life and breath and joy in living. Grant me a heartsong that is as pure and joyful as the morning hymns sung by the birds, Lord. The old hymn is right, Abba...How can I keep from singing?