Stop Chirping and Feed

Hello Fellow Sojourners!

Welcome to those who are new and thanks to all of you who share this with others!

In the early mornings, here in Virginia, you can feel Fall in the air. Some of the leaves are turning yellow and the birds are definitely storing up. Right now we've got tons of Monarch Butterflies coming through.

This year it feels really special to watch them since we got our yard certified as a Monarch Way Station. There are lots of projects that you and your family can do to help the Monarchs. What a lesson for young and old on how we can be transformed by accepting Jesus in our heart as Lord and Savior. If you'd like to know more about butterflies and maybe find a project that fits your time schedules, visit the Monarch Watch website.

Because the deer eat so many of our plants here, we keep some plants on the deck. That's where our Stonecrop Sedums are and we've discovered that the Monarchs enjoy them also. I took these photos on Friday, a day when we literally had hundreds of Monarchs flying through. They were all over our butterfly bushes and flowers.

I simply couldn't get much work done that day. Watching them and being outside as they floated around me was mesmerizing. I thought of my dear friend, Louise, in Alabama, who hasn't been able to walk around for awhile until her leg heals. It's hard to stay sitting or lying down when you are used to being active. She loves butterflies and I pictured her and me sitting in the butterfly bench that her husband made for us. Watching such a show would surely have made her feel as though she was moving with them.

The butterfly bench has been a real blessing to us and oddly to many subscribers who write me and tell me they find peace and rest just by looking at it. I'm sure there's a lot of the Holy Spirit in it since Charlie is not known as being artistic. He relied on the Holy Spirit to direct him every step of the way on making this bench. We saw it in a shop in Charleston, SC, when we met Charlie and Louise there for a visit.

Hugs and Blessings!
Donna

Today's Featured Article

Stop Chirping and Eat
by Donna L. Watkins

We can be hidden in Christ. God provides a place where the Evil One cannot touch us. A place where Satan dare not enter. If we take time to place ourselves in His care each day, we can escape many troubles. When we spend time with our Father we get a glow that repels the Enemy's attacks. Colossians 3:2-3 says,

"Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God."

Set your mind on things above. Heavenly things. Holy things. God invites us to come and share this wonderful hidden place. We can dwell in "the secret place of the Most High" and "abide under the shadow of the Almighty" as Psalm 91 shows us.

If you don't feel like you are being protected, maybe you are not dwelling. Like any place we may travel to so we can get a fresh new look at the world and it's beauty, we have to seek direction to get there. We have to take the time to spend there and we have to sit quietly and absorb it all when we get there.

God offers us a secret place to dwell in. Do we take it? When we are in pain and our health or life's problems seem to overwhelm us, where do we run? To shop? To eat? To whine and wallow in our own self-pity, feeling like we are in solitary confinement because nobody understands? Everybody has problems in this life, so sadly, very often, people don't have time to understand. They are dealing with their own pain.

God always understands and provides a way out if we seek Him. You are regenerated by the power of His Word and it will take out of your illness, or divorce, or loss of a loved one, or job loss, or anything that vows to eat you alive, to a place where it is eaten up in a victorious shout.

If you can see that the devil is out to kill, steal and destroy you, then you will take the time to renew your mind with the precious Word that is all-powerful. Smith Wigglesworth says, "It is in you as an incorruptible force, taking you on from victory to victory until death itself can be overcome, until sin has no authority, until disease could not be in the body. This is a living fact by the Word of God.......If I cannot make a person who is suffering from disease righteously indignant against that condition, I cannot help him. If I can make every sufferer know that suffering, disease, and all these things are the workings of the Devil, I can help him........ Have the reality of this; build upon it by perfect soundness until you are in the place of perfect bliss, for to know Christ is perfect bliss."

I was sitting on our screened porch one day and a young Tufted Titmouse flew up to the screen. It had been out of the nest maybe a few days. It was obvious the parents had scheduled this time for it to be alone to discover life in all of its realities.

It kept chirping. I could hear the longing in that chirp for the days when life was easy in the nest, being fed, being kept warm, with parents keeping the nest clean by carrying off the fecal sacs. Then one day he was forced to move out. Time to fly. A rather scary thing when all you ever knew to do was squat and stretch your neck a bit.

Here, hanging on the screen, the Titmouse was oblivious to the fact that there was a cat on the other side, our Squeek. Surely his instincts would tell it that the cat was not a good thing, but for now, he was chirping and whining for the "good ole days." He kept hopping from the screen to the bush beside the porch, up into the tree, and back down again. "Chirp! Chirp! Where's my mama? Where's the food that papa used to bring me? What a cruel world."

Eventually one parent came with a morsel of food and some comfort. I just knew it was out there watching as its little one tried to cope with the reality of the cruel world. One day birds will live with cats and lions with lambs, but for now it's a struggle for them ..... as it is for us. We chirp and chirp for somebody to feed us when God has said it is time for us to be weaned. Time for us to get our own supply of food from his Word and time to overcome the evil in the world with good.

That Tufted Titmouse made the transition quickly because his life depended on it. Our lives depend on making a transition from allowing the evil to control us to beign victorious and well fed by God's Word. Don't hang around on the screen of life with something lurking on the other side that can eat you up. When you feel tempted to sit and chirp away, fly to the Word of God and feast on it in victory.

You have been born again to be an overcomer! Don't hang on the screen with evil on the other side. Flee and feed on the Word of Life. Until we get to Heaven, it's the only safe place to be.

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Copyright and Reprint Information
© 2006 Donna L. Watkins

All photos remain the property of Donna L. Watkins. You may forward or use this copyrighted article on a website if you include the following credit and link:

This article originally published in "A Healing Moment" was reprinted with permission. The Herbs Place provides a free email subscription to "A Healing Moment." Visit the author's website for more articles and other free newsletters available. http://www.theherbsplace.com/ahm.html