A Lesson from the Hummingbird

I have always been fascinated with hummingbirds. I love how they flap their wings so fast, their cute little size, the pretty flowers they drink out of, etc. However, until recently it seemed that I rarely saw hummingbirds. My mom talked about seeing them all the time at her house, but she has a feeder for them. Yet when I would go to her house, I would always just miss them when one of them would come up to feed. A little over a year ago, Preston and I took a trip to the mountains. I was relaxing on the deck of our chalet when all of a sudden I heard this very loud buzzing noise. I was alarmed, thinking somewhere near me is a HUGE bug, but when I looked in the direction of the noise, instead of a bug, it was a pretty little hummingbird - not more than 4 feet from me!
The other day my mom gave us a hummingbird feeder and even hung it up for us, right outside our kitchen window by our table. I was skeptical. It seems very late in the season for hummingbirds to find new sources of food, and I never see them around here anyway, I thought. Imagine my surprise when that same afternoon we had our first hummingbird visit our feeder! Since then, we have one every several minutes come up to the feeder, even while we are all sitting right there at the window!
Now that I have had several days to get to know these amazing creatures a little better, I am much better at recognizing them. Before, I could be sitting at my kitchen table, see something dart past outside from the corner of my eye, and I assumed it was a large bug (a very fast bug, I often wondered just what kind of bug was it that could fly that fast.) I would also sometimes see a tree branch move suddenly, without any seeming reason. Now that I have gotten to know the hummingbirds better - how they move and fly, what they look like better than I did before, etc. - I can see them all over the place. I now know that thing I saw zooming past my window was a hummingbird, when that branch starts to move, I can now see the hummingbird that just landed on it. Because I spent time getting to know the hummingbird, I can see it more easily and enjoy its presence more often.
The same is true of our walk with God. There are so many times when we want to "see" God, to see Him working around us. If we are seeking His will for something, we keep an eye out, hoping to find the path He wants for us, and getting frustrated and confused when it seems that He isn't showing us that path or speaking to us. Maybe it's because we are not spending enough time with Him. He wants us to spend time at His window (the Bible), so that we can learn more about His character, and how He moves and acts. When we do, we will suddenly realize that it's much easier to see Him moving around us. We will recognize His movements and be able to discern what He is showing us. When "weird" things happen, things that don't seem to have an explanation, we will recognize that it was God orchestrating something. Before, some things looked ugly and undesirable (like the giant bugs I thought I was seeing), but after we sit at that Window, we will recognize that it is God moving - just in a way we weren't expecting. I know I need to spend more time at that Window, sitting and watching the way God moves throughout Scriptures. Because when I do, I will recognize Him more easily and enjoy His presence more often.