Because It Has a Song

                                        

 "A bird does not sing because it has an answer; it sings because it has a song."

--quote from an old Taste of Home 

I was going through some things in my drawer a few days ago, and ran across an old letter I wrote family, starting off with that quote--actually from nine years ago, and I had printed it off--and I reread it.

Maybe we don't have all the answers to dish out to people, but we can still sing--in our homes, in our hearts.

Saturday afternoon, I felt like I lost my song for a little while. About a dozen of our church people were practicing for prison service, and I had just a little earlier been hit with something that was too heavy for me--that I didn't have an answer for. I was struggling against the bitterness of it.

I was afraid it was showing all over my face. 

Body language, you know. 

I stood there trying to sing my little solo part, and my voice would hardly sing. It just wobbled. 

Those are moments when it isn't just you getting ready to cry--everyone else probably was, too--unless some were wishing someone would throw me off the platform!

The next thing I found myself doing was saying, "I don't need to sing a solo. I'm just falling apart!"

And then I was shaking so bad that I put my music down and exited the sanctuary. 

Maybe no one else wobbles every once in a while like I do. But thanks to a couple sturdy friends who took the little brown sparrow who had lost its song

under their wing

and prayed with me and cared about what I was dealing with even though I could not share all the details. 

They were determined that the bird who had lost both wing and song

should sing again.

The Lord lifted the burden and took away the sting of bitterness, and Jonathan and I went to prison with the rest--and we laughed and chatted on the way,

and waited quietly as the prison wardens waited for doors to unlock

praying and drawing hard on God's strength.

 It did not have an answer, but a little brown sparrow 

sang again.