Silence After a Loss

I love the birds probably thanks to my parents who always loved birds and fed them. I have followed suit most of my adult life. I have a feeder filled with sunflower seeds, one with thistle, one with mixed seed and of course with the sweet water in the summer that draws the hummingbirds into my yard.

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 I always knew that all this food brought to my yard lots of activity and enjoyment ofwatching the bird’s behaviors, but did not realize how much until I decided to stop feeding them before the cold weather arrived this year. I have never done this before but thought that since I would be away much of January, I did not want them to suddenly lose their source of food in the dead of winter.  

I look out my window today, and it is eerily silent. Not even a single bird has come to roost anywhere in my yard. My dog, Ava, does not even bother to look out the window where she normally gazes for long periods of time. It is this same silence that sometimes happens in our lives when we lose someone significant in our lives. It seems so different, so empty. Something is truly missing. 

This same sense of silence and emptiness is true when we lose a loved one. This past Sunday, we remembered our loved ones that we lost this last year as we celebrated All Saints Sunday. I hope that though we may mourn the loss of loved ones that we can know that God has provided the way forward for those who have gone to be with him, as well as for us who survive. There is hope if we will just open our hearts and minds to  realize it. God receives those who have died but God is a God of the living. Turn an empty, lonely, sad heart to Him and the Holy Spirit will pick you up and feed you with exactly what your heart needs. 

I know without certainty that come spring, I am going to fill my feeders again and am going to enjoy seeing the arrival of new families of birds milling about, singing, fussing with one another and resting in my yard.

Pastor Patti Napier