I confess that my favorite animals are birds. Especially the little birds that sing among the trees. They sing to their creator, I know. But they remind me of God for another reason. I feel that God speaks to us in different ways: in the scriptures, in nature, in a child's smile, in the wise voice of an elder, in the eyes of someone who has no roof to shelter them from the cold, the heat, and the rain, and also in the song of a little bird. The little birds remind me of God because I can hear them and yet I cannot see them. They hide among the branches of the trees, concealed from my view, like God. Except for winter mornings. I just went out to have a coffee in my backyard and I could hear their song. However, because the trees were bare, they were exposed to my eyes. And I thought that's how life is sometimes. God tries to speak to us, to make Himself present in our lives, but through the leafy canopy of our life's tree, we cannot see Him and we pass Him by, ignoring His call. However, it is in our winter days that we can clearly see the Lord, that we feel Him closer, that we pay closer attention, as when we face a difficulty, an illness, a problem. It is then that we realize that God has always been by our side, perhaps hidden by our own spiritual blindness. Yes, I love the leafy trees of summer and spring, but the leafless trees have reminded me how, during my own illness, God revealed Himself to me in a book, in a Bible, in a journal, in some drawings. But thank God my illness is behind me; I only hope that I never lose sight of Him. As a popular song says: "You can see Him if you look at the one next to you; you can feel Him deep within your heart."
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