Vultures and Hummingbirds

A few years ago my husband and I watched a mama cow in the front pasture who had recently given birth.  The little calf was laying in the green grass nearby the placenta which had recently released its occupant.  Just a few minutes after the birth, Larry saw these six vultures hovering around the pasture just waiting to gobble up their meal – the mouth-watering placenta.

A little later we also saw a hummingbird fliting around some wildflowers, joyfully drinking some of the sweet juice it had found. 

These two memories recently resurfaced as I finished reading a chapter from the book Winning the War for your Mind by Craig Groeschel, as he made the comparison between vultures and hummingbirds.  When a vulture flies around what is it looking for?  It always looks for dead things.  Apparently, vultures can smell roadkill from over a mile away.  Vultures primarily focus on dead things, smashed, squished or rotting – that is their specialty.

Hummingbirds, on the other hand, are attracted to sweet, life-giving nectar.  As they fly, their wings flapping 20 times per second, they are continually on the search for beautiful flowers and fragrant blossoms.  Hummingbirds focus on life and beauty.

What a difference in the goal of their hunts – one seeking out death and the other looking for life.  Every day each bird finds what they are looking for.

Craig uses these two feathered friends to illustrate the way each of us tend to preframe our perspectives during the day.  At the beginning of each day we typically have a mindset of what we expect during the day.  We can choose how to view something before it happens. 

It’s so easy to fall into the trap of preframing our day with the thoughts:

Today will be the same old same old stuff I face every day.  Same stuff, different day.  I’ll never be able to get done all I need to.  I’m overwhelmed.

 We expect and look for those things that bring us down, despairing and hopeless.  The way of the vulture.

Thankfully there’s another way to preframe our day even before we get started.  With God’s help we can choose the frame for the day – looking for the life-giving beauty, giving thanks for His care.  If you know you’re in for a challenging day you could say to yourself:

Today I will experience God’s strength through my weakness.  He gives me everything I need for what I’m called to do.  Instead of a bad, busy day, I’m going to enjoy a good productive one.

There is not a moment in your life when God has forgotten or forsaken you.  He assures us, In the world you will have trouble, but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.  We cannot control what happens to us, but we can choose how we will frame it.  We can see our circumstances through the lens of His mercy and grace, knowing our strength comes from Him. This is the way of the hummingbird.

It’s a beautiful thing to know we are loved and cared for by our Heavenly Father who has promised to carry our burdens.

It’s also empowering to know we have a choice:

To follow the way of the vulture or the way of the hummingbird.