The Calm Hummingbird

If you have ever watched hummingbirds, you know.  They have manic energy.  They charge around from one perch to another trying to get the best nectar.  And they fight for it.  They squabble almost constantly trying to get to our feeder.  Never mind that there six…I repeat…six holes, I often see one frantic hummingbird fighting to be the only one at the feeder.
 
But this morning as I ate breakfast, I noticed a calm hummingbird.  All the others buzzed and fought around him.  But he didn’t take his beak out of the feeder.  One zoomed this way and one darted the other.  But he didn’t move.  Occasionally, another bird would join him at the feeder but he didn’t mind.  He just kept drinking.  Calmly.
 
I want to be the calm hummingbird.  Everyone around me is all riled up about…everything.  The news and the elections (next year).  “It’s chaos.” Their actions scream as they dart around from disaster to disaster: Our pastor just left (or might leave), "Mary" is sick (or might be), and our roof is leaking (but only when it rains).  And some of those things are important, but what does anxious activity achieve?  Exactly what the flighty hummingbirds get.
 
That calm hummingbird drank glorious sugar water for ninety seconds straight while the little cloud of hummingbirds around him – some of them – got a sip or two in the meantime.  There is a reason God said, be still and know I am God.  It is in the stillness my spirit communes with God and is renewed.  It is not in the maniac excitement.
 
The calm humming bird couldn’t choose what others did around him.  But he could (and did) chose what he did.  Stillness (or peace) is not the result of what others are doing around me.  Stillness is a choice I have to make – whether I am in a crowd of fifty thousand or fifty miles from the nearest person.
 
I choose to be the calm hummingbird.
 
“I will hear what God the Lord will speak, For He will speak peace To His people and to His saints; But let them not turn back to folly.” – Psalm 85:8

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