Every Friday, an old man walked from his house in the early evening down to the ocean, carrying a bucket of shrimp. And as the sun started its descent and the evening waves gently lapped the shore, he walked to the end of the pier and reached in his bucket of shrimp and began to feed the birds who were already there waiting for him. Slowly, intentionally, he distributed the contents of his bucket, as he did every Friday evening, with the sun slipping down over the horizon.

What was he doing there? He was saying thank you.

His name was Captain Eddie Rickenbacker. Years before, in October, 1942, President Roosevelt dispatched Captain Rickenbacker with a special message to General MacArthur who was beginning to plan American strategy in the Pacific war. But the B-17 became lost, ran out of fuel and went down. The crew of eight made it into lifeboats and then began a harrowing, desperate fight to survive the sun, sharks, waves, and most of all, hunger.

When it seemed that the end had come and there was no hope, when they had prayed all they could pray, Captain      Rickenbaker, in the raft, was asleep with his cap over his eyes. He felt something. A bird had lit on his head. He knew if he could catch it, they would survive. He did. And they ate it. They used its entrails for bait. They survived.

And so the old captain, now hunched over, but still proud, every Friday of his life, took his bucket of shrimp and fed the birds and said, ‘Thank you.’

What was that sea gull doing there hundreds of miles from land anyway?

⁵ So he did what the LORD had told him. He went to the Kerith Ravine, east of the Jordan, and stayed there. ⁶ The ravens brought him bread and meat in the morning and bread and meat in the evening, and he drank from the brook. (1 Kings 17:5-6

The other night  I saw a fox.   I was driving home from Wal*Mart and a fox ran across Taylor drive in front of me.  A Big red fox.

This Spring a duck made a nest and laid her eggs under our bedroom window and behind the bushes in our front yard.

Last winter deer invaded our backyard and nibbled on seed from our bird feeders.

What does this say?  It tells me these creatures are being pushed out of their natural habitats due to urban sprawl.  Farmers are selling their land to developers and so the fox is looking for duck eggs in my neighborhood.

If I said, “I can go hunting from my back porch,” you would think I lived in the North woods.  Not anymore.

God’s creatures are doing what they can to survive the unraveling of their world.  Are they smarter than us?

“Even the stork in the sky
knows her appointed seasons,
and the dove, the swift and the thrush
observe the time of their migration.
But my people do not know
the requirements of the LORD.” Jeremiah 8:7

I grew up eating fish.  Fish fried, fish boiled, fish baked, fish I caught, fish smoked, fish cakes, fish in jars and fish in cans.  Does this sound fishy?  Not if your ancestry is half Norwegian and Half Swedish. Scandinavian without excuse.

It was not uncommon for my dad to open a small can of King Oscar Sardines and take out a box of Saltines and hand me a cracker and sardine while watching a ballgame on TV.  I grew up with it.  Or Sunday night for supper it was smoked chubs on rye bread with a cucumber and onion salad followed by a pudding called, Danish Dessert.

I thought God made sardines just for us.  However, we humans are just another species waiting in line to dine.  This amazing Video will show you that the sardines that get to the grocery store shelf made it through an army of predators from sea and sky.  Check out, “Sardine Run.”  God’s creation is so glorious!!!  What has nature taught you about the Lord?  Do you like to eat fish?  Any favorite?

7 “But ask the animals, and they will teach you,
or the birds of the air, and they will tell you;

⁸ or speak to the earth, and it will teach you,
or let the fish of the sea inform you.

⁹ Which of all these does not know
that the hand of the LORD has done this? Job 12:7-9

From THE BIG PICTURE:

Today is Earth Day, a day set aside for awarenesss and appreciation of the Earth’s environment, and our roles within it – this year marking the 40th anniversary of Earth Day. As a way to help appreciate and observe our environment, I’ve collected 40 images below, each a glimpse into some aspect of the world around us, how it affects and sustains us, and how we affect it. Happy Earth Day everyone. (40 photos total)

Carol Getzinger wrote these reflections on a decaying, sagging old home she saw in the Appalachian Mountains on the border between Virginia and West Virginia. It shows how the biblical principle of “they, being dead, yet speaketh” manifests itself in mysterious and myriad ways.

“There is a haunted house in the woods,” my friends had said. “Do you want to see it?”

The small house stands, falling slowly in time, in a clearing whose edges lay piled with a loose fence of stones, perhaps three feet high, grubbed out by hand from their abundance in the earth. “Why is it haunted?” I ask. “A woman lived here with nine children.”

It is a forlorn house now. The handhewn logs, with the cracks chinked, show in places where the facing wood has fallen off. There had been two stories, a room above and a room below. Now the doorways sag, the window lists and the roof is partially caved in. The clearing holds evidence of how hard the life must have been – enormous numbers of rocks moved to make a garden, water carried to grow enough to eat, wood cut and chopped for heating and cooking, weeds pulled, racoons and deer chased away.

I am sad as I look in the tumbledown cabin for what I cannot see. But then I round the corner by the door, and there where the morning sun falls, a patch of daffodils grows. The woman who lived there must have been given a few bulbs to plant. In the space of abandoned time, they have multiplied. As I pause, absorbing this largess of yellow near the woods still brown and the fields still beige, I suddenly know she watched in hope each early spring. That hope was affirmed and reaffirmed; and through the grace of God, she shares it with me, even now, in that patch of yellow daffodils.

Dear God: How easy to forget that other generations share the same gifts you offer us. Let us remember that the body of Christ, of which we are a part, encompasses others far beyond our touch. yet from those distant places they still reach out to us with their courage and love. Amen.
–Carol Getzinger, Kensington, Md. (Used by permission).

This little deer came looking for a bite to eat from fallen birdseed in the snow.  The world is coming to an end.  No wild creatures have ever come this close to my back patio.  Maybe I should take down the St. Francis statue and put up a picture of Charleton Heston?

I took this photo at 10:15 PM Monday.  Looking out the window on my driveway at my lighted trees.  Apparently the camera picked up six small blue “aliens” who were running away under the trees to hide.  We should have a good foot of snow on the ground by morning!!!

It was GREAT weather on Saturday so Karin and Trevor took us to the beautiful Minnesota Arboretum.  Enjoy the show!

I have enjoyed the flora and natural environments of Door County through the seasons.  I came upon this Lady Slipper in our campground.  As you can see looking closely to the left, the mosquitos were also having fun in the woods!  It is a very rare species of orchid!  Botanists from other countries find it of supreme value as an orchid.  It grows in abundance in Door County and is their official wildflower.  If you are interested you can read more about Door’s Lady Slipper here: < LINK.

You can’t improve on God’s creative hand in producing such beauty and simplicity in the amazing array of wildflowers – up here in the North and down in the Amazon basin.  What a generous God we have!

I have noticed more tweets, chirps and bird songs falling from trees into my ears of late.  I wonder how many species of birds actually migrate from Wisconsin in the autumn and then return in Spring.  I came up with the following report from this Wisconsin site…

Statewide Birding Report as of April 17, 2008

Warmer temperatures and south winds have brought many new birds into Wisconsin over the last week. Forest migrants include hermit thrush, yellow-bellied sapsucker, kinglets, winter wren, fox sparrow and yellow-rumped warblers. American bitterns, sora and Virginia rails and other marsh species have returned to southern Wisconsin. The annual migration of tundra swans is well underway with large numbers of birds seen in flooded agricultural fields from Green Bay west and northwest to Burnett County. Breeding activity is also picking up for birders who like to watch displays of woodcock, prairie chickens, sharp-tailed grouse, cranes and other early breeders. Ruffed Grouse drumming has also begun in earnest now in many areas of the state. Northern Wisconsin birders are still reporting redpolls, evening grosbeaks, and a few lingering northern shrikes. Next week should bring the first push of early shorebirds and upland sandpipers, grasslands birds (Henslow’s sparrow), and more of the early forest migrants including blue-gray gnatcatcher, house wren and a few early warblers along with broad-winged hawks and short-eared owls. Please report bird sightings to eBird (www.ebird.org/WI) to help better track bird migration this spring.

Like Jesus, it is fun to “consider the birds of the air…” (Matthew 6:26)