Bird Vs. Window

Bird vs. Window

Bible Blast: Read Ecclesiastes 1:3-8

I observed everything going on under the sun, and really, it is all meaningless—like chasing the wind. Ecclesiastes 1:14

It’s Saturday morning. You’re sitting on the couch watching Saturday morning cartoons in your cozy jammies and slippers. Just as you put a spoonful of your very fave cereal into your mouth, you hear a thud. Then you hear it again. Thud! Something is hitting the window. Thud! Could it be? Is it really? A bird! A bright red cardinal! It’s repeatedly flying into your living room window. Thud!

Have you ever seen such a weird thing? It happens quite a lot—and not just with cardinals. Robins do it, and apparently larger birds like wild turkeys fly into windows too.

Some birds are really territorial. That means when a bird builds a nest, it becomes the king of all the area, or territory, surrounding that nest. So if it sees another bird or animal coming too close, it will try to scare it off, which brings us to the window war. Birds don’t have the kind of brain that can understand the difference between what’s a reflection and what’s real. So if a territorial bird like a cardinal sees its own reflection in something like a window, it will attack it over and over. It doesn’t understand that the “other bird” isn’t real.

There’s really not much you can do if this happens except to cover the outside of the window. But that’s not really a great solution because birds will try to find their “opponent” in some other window and attack that reflection. It will find the “other bird” in every window it sees. It’s such a meaningless battle for the poor bird to fight. Solomon calls that kind of fruitless endeavor a “chasing after the wind.”

Ecclesiastes 1 is full of Solomon’s thoughts about everything the world chases after, and he concludes that the behavior is pointless. It won’t result in anything good or useful, just like that bird attacking its own reflection.

In Colossians 3:2, Paul says that we need to “think about the things of heaven, not the things of earth.” Focusing on what’s important to God will keep us from doing silly things that would be like chasing the wind.

Girl Gab: What would you do if a big wild turkey kept flying into your window? I would grab the video camera! Ask God to help you think about heavenly things, not earthly things today.