Painted Bunting

PAINTED BUNTING

It was Saturday morning; the first full day of summer. Not that it mattered, temperature-wise; as we had been experiencing days with highs of over 100 degrees for several weeks. I was sitting on the front porch enjoying my breakfast when I heard the sound of a Painted Bunting somewhere in the trees on the east side of the house.

I was grateful that a few of them had been around for a month or more because to my way of thinking, Painted Buntings are one of the most beautiful birds God ever created. The blue head, red throat and belly, yellow back and green wings make them as easy to recognize as they are to look at.

I had noticed a pattern in the way the bird began and ended his day. Shortly after sunrise, as it was now, and again shortly before sunset, the melodious male would sit at the very top of one of the tallest trees and sing his song. I cannot even begin to describe that sound with words, but once you have heard it, it is easily recognizable the next time.

Scanning the tree tops, I soon found the songster in one of them. This time, however, he was recognizable only by his song and his shape. Being early morning, the sun was behind him, in other words, he was between me and the recently risen sun. This meant that I could see only the dark silhouette of a bird; his bright colors were not evident. As was his habit, he would sing from one tree for a few minutes and then move to another where he would repeat the performance.      

   

On several previous occasions I had been on the porch late in the evening just before sunset and had witnessed this same pattern, but with one significant difference. At that time of the day I was between the bird and the sun and as he sang high up in the trees his beautiful colors were brightly illuminated by the setting sun.

Ever notice how the Son shining on God's human creatures tends to bring out the beauty in them also? In comparison to other objects of God's creation, mankind is recognizable just by his shape and his "song". But it's when Jesus, the Son of God begins to shine on and in a person that he becomes recognizable because of his love, his compassion, his generosity, his caring, etc. Without the Son, the best that any person can be is "not bad", but with the indwelling, enabling presence of the Son, any person can be as beautiful as God intended when He first created Adam in the Garden of Eden.

It's wasn't the size, the shape, or the song that made the difference in the beauty of the Bunting, only the position of the sun.

The same is true for people, it all depends on whether we open our hearts and lives to the Son or we keep Him out, relying on our own beauty to get us by. Without the Son, mankind will never be as beautiful as was intended by the Creator.