We have a Peregrine falcon in our small town area. I noticed it perched in our tree once....flying overhead a number of times....and right on top of the patio umbrella on another occasion. I feed the birds every morning....and two or three hours later the seed is all gone. There are occasions....yesterday was one....when the birds do not show up at all. I'll hear them in the bushes but they don't venture out. The falcon will get a pigeon or a blue jay or a morning dove now and then.
The small birds are always looking around....always vigilant. They will grab a seed....in the process knocking a couple seeds on the ground....look left and right....then go for another seed. The morning doves stay at the bottom of the feeder to get the table scraps.....as do the squirrels and the grinny. The small birds like me....the squirrels think that it's fun to throw nuts at me from the tree....it's like a dog that brings a stick and wants to play....and the pigeons basically ignore me. Only the cats don't like it when I'm around....for they want to get that grinny. I have never in forty years seen a snake in our yard....nor a groundhog in our town....but once or twice a deer became lost and wandered the streets.I remember the first time that I heard a lion actually roar. It was at one of those smaller....living treasures type of local zoos. The sound seemed to vibrate around the whole area. Have we become too accustomed to Peter's words in the fifth chapter of his first letter...."Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour."?
It has become obvious to me that the birds know when that peregrine falcon is flying somewhere overhead. It must be the same in the jungle with the lion....and even in the ocean with sharks.
Preachers used to be good at giving warnings....that was a big part of their calling....but all that is gone....save in small fundamentalist churches looked down upon in this modern age of the exaltation of the intellect over even the concept of God....let alone the roaring of any devils.
I'd like to recommend to you a short thirty minute film. It's probably over forty years old. I have a copy of it on VHS but nothing to play it on. Fortunately it is available on YouTube. It's a British film....where one of their wonderful actors plays the part of John Bunyan. He emerges from the woods to a grassy opening to give a sermon to a group of villagers who had gathered against the laws of the land to hear the preached Word of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
After watching this film ask yourself if you have ever heard anything like this preached in any of the churches you have ever attended. I dare say that you may either laugh at the silliness of the film....or kneel?
It's a little tricky getting to this film but if you Google....YouTube, John Bunyan, The Preacher....it should be the third link down....with the words....Pilgrim's Progress Author....in parentheses.
