Spring is here. The birds are returning. All around our house they're picking up twigs and grass and beginning to build their nests. Robins and sparrows, junkos and cowbirds, finches and herons. Have you seen all the Canada Geese flying overhead?

Have you seen any signs of birds building nests near your home? Have you watched how they do it? Seen the sort of material they use? The way they dig around in the grass, and pull and tug?

Have you watched them hunt for food?
Or take a bath? Or fluff their feathers in the dirt?

I want to tell you about one bird that you probably won't see. It doesn't come this far north. It's called the Limpkin. Goose-sized. Grayish-brown with white spots and streaks. Long, slender, down-curved bill. A jerky flight, with a rapid upstroke and slower downstroke. Has a wailing call: Krrr-ow.
The Limpkin lives in swamps and marshes. You probably wouldn't want to join it for breakfast, I think. It eats snails, frogs, tadpoles and water insects.

You won't see the Limpkin much for a couple of reasons.
One being that it doesn't look too fancy. Kind of blah looking - browny grey, looking just like grass and reeds. People in a hurry zoom right by it.
The other is that this bird is nocturnal - it moves and hunts at night. The darkness covers its activity.

The Limpkin is a careful bird, quietly walking through the marshes, busy hunting to feed her babies that she cares for in a special nest built out of water plants - like a little island. It always keeps an eye out for predators that would enjoy it as a tasty meal.

What a marvellous creature. It's colouring helps it blend into the reeds, natural camouflage, perfect for a predator. It's bill is just right for scooping into the water between sticks and weeds to pull out little wriggling creatures. The long legs and wide toes help it navigate the mushy marsh bottoms. Excellent eye sight allow it to do its work under the cover of darkness. It has been well equipped by its Creator to face the cycle of life - all the way from birth to raising young to eventual death.

YOU may not know about the Limpkin. Will probably never see one. But there IS someone keeping a careful eye on this special little bird - even when it is keeping it's watchful eyes on the marshy reeds looking for the next passing tadpole who will become dinner.
The Limpkin is being watched -- always -- by someone who loves it and cares for it; the One who made it -- the Creator, God in heaven.

The Bibles says in Mt 10.29: "not even one sparrow falls to the ground apart from the will of your Father in Heaven"
- not a sparrow or a Limpkin.

An expert bird watcher would be lucky to see one Limpkin in a lifetime.
God knows the condition and place of each one at all times.

The Limpkin - one of God's little creatures, insignificant perhaps in the overall scheme of things, but wonderful, complicated, equipped, and cared for.

It's spring. The birds are back. And so are the flowers. Hurray! Even in this frozen wasteland of Ottawa flowers are blooming. We have little bulbs with star flowers poking out of the ground. A little purple primrose is in our front garden, and some tiny violets. Daffodils.
Have you seen some blooming flowers?

In our bible reading Jesus said, "See how the lilies of the field grow."
I wonder what kinds of flowers he was looking at.

People who know a lot more about this sort of thing tell me that as Jesus spoke he was probably sweeping his hand over a whole field full of different plants that filled Palestinian fields with colour in those days:
blue anemone
scarlet and orange poppies
yellow buttercups
white lilies

Each of these was a perennial, growing up year after year from a tuberous root mass, spreading out thick roots and from there fine rootlets and tiny hairs which snaked through the soil seeking the nourishment of deep down water and minerals and other nutrients.
Early each spring they would push through the surface and send tender green shoots to the sun. The bud would grow and explode into a mass of colour. The insects would be attracted to it, pollinating it and allowing seeds to form so that next year even more brilliance could be splashed across the field.
And so it would go - year after year. Intricate, beautiful right down to the cellular level, designed to take advantage of its surroundings by a careful, wise Creator.

Have any of you studied flowers and plants - how they grow and reproduce? The stamen and pistil, the ovary, style, sigma - all that stuff?
Amazingly wonderful.

Genesis 1.11,12: says "Then God said, 'Let the land produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants and trees... according to their various kinds.' And it was so... And God saw that it was good."

The Creator God loves those anemone and buttercups and poppies.
He takes pride in them and cares for them.

"Do you see these," asks Jesus?
"Yes Lord, I'm considering them, and yes, you DO take incredibly good care of these things."

III God provides for Linda
Look at the birds.
Look at the flowers.
So small.
And they don't live very long.
They're not what we'd call very important.

BUT

GOD says they're important!

And if those little things are important
well.....
.....what about you?

People - the subject of Psalm 139 - what about us?
Consider.
What am I? How do I compare to these masterpieces of creation, the Limpkin and the Lily? What am I all about? Consider the wonder:

When my parents united in an act of love 23 chromosomes from my mother and 23 from my father, carrying some 15000 genes from each parent, were joined together. These genes, like letters of a divine alphabet, spelled out the unique things that make me, well, me
- colour of eyes, hair and skin, facial features, body type and personality qualities and intelligence, sex.

Within 6 to 12 hours of fertilization the one cell had split into two, and then 4 and then 8 and so on.
I, all 8 cells of me, journeyed down the fallopian tubes and settles into my mother's womb, implanted into the uterine wall, where I grew at a dizzying rate. At 3 weeks my heart began to beat. By 4 weeks arms and legs had appeared, internal organs were growing, and I was 10,000 times larger than at first.

By 6 weeks the brain was fully developed and its signals could be measured. At three months I was a beautiful little astronaut moving in my watery capsule with unique fingerprints, closed eyelids and a translucent skin.
And so it went, until some 266 days after conception I was born, an intricate baby containing millions upon millions of cells, each with a special function.

Says the Bible, "You, O God, created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb.... My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the dearth your eyes saw my unformed body...."

Genesis 1.27: "So God created humanity in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them."

God is proud of the Limpkin.
He enjoys the beauty of the Lily;....
BUT
"If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you....?"

The Limpkin may hide in the swamps unseen to human eyes, with only it's strange squawk being heard.
Flowers may fade from view with gathering darkness.

And maybe sometimes we feel like we're hiding, too. Or like nobody sees us or cares about us - small, not very pretty us, unimportant not too smart us.
Ever felt that way?
Nobody at school thinks about us if we're home sick.
Nobody at church stops to talk to us.
If I disappeared, so what?

As I do this, and as perhaps you also do this, the Bible taps us on the shoulder with this reminder:
"Is there anyplace I can go to avoid your Spirit? To be out of your sight?
If I climb to the sky, you're there! If I go underground, you're there!
If I flew on morning's wings to the far western horizon,
You'd find me in a minute -
You're already there waiting!
Then I said to myself, "Oh, He even sees me in the dark!
At night I'm immersed in the light!"
It's a fact: darkness isn't dark to you;
night and day, darkness and light, they're all the same to you."

There are the times when I don't even look out for myself. At some point I have to fall asleep, even if it is a fitful sleep of pain or worry or agonizing uncertainty. I fall asleep. My brainwave patterns slow down, and I lose track of myself. I lose control over me. But then I wake. I rub my eyes and try to regain control. I look beside my bed and realize that like a ever-diligent night nurse:
Ps 139.18: "When I awake I am still with you!"
Not because I hung close to you, but because you, O God, continued to cradle me in your arms.

In another place it is written:
"Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne? Though she may forget, I will not forget you! See, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands;"

God NEVER abandons his own. Not in good times. Nor in the other times. Ours lives are not sent on some free-wheeling, uncontrolled roller coaster ride.

The One who put us together inside our mother hasn't given up on us.
He isn't giving up on us.
He won't give up on us.

And if you need more than a bird and flower to remind you of that -
If you still wonder about that.....
well....
Then consider who it was that calls us to watch the Limpkin and the Lily. Consider Jesus, the Son of God, who gave up his royal home in heaven to come to earth. He came to be one with us, to live as we live, to struggle as we struggle. He came to bring us salvation - new hope for living, a new start in living, a new future for living, now and in eternity.

Consider Jesus. SEE Jesus. See how HE cared, cared enough to come to earth, cared enough to suffer and die on the cross, cared enough to extend an offer of forgiveness, membership in the family of God, and eternal life to all who are willing to simply hold out their hand and receive it in faith.

Think about it - if he was willing to give up so much and work so hard in order to secure the great big things for my life, beginning with my eternal destiny, will he not also have attention and energy and desire to care for us in the lesser things?

Consider the birds of the air.
Consider the lilies of the field.
Consider the one who points to those things. Consider Jesus.
Yes, indeed. God cares for the Limpkins, for the lilies,
for you....
His masterpiece!!