Float Like a Hummingbird

Morning devotions
(couldn't snag one of our Picnic Dinner)

Acts 2: 42-45 “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe, and many wonders and miraculous signs were done by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common.”

Wilderness Tour ’15 – Float Like a Hummingbird

I know, I now. Muhammad Ali said, “Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.” Well, I felt like I was floating like a hummingbird during our Wilderness Tour Picnic Dinner the Monday evening after our first day-hike. I floated, I flitted from one person to the next, darting in and tasting their day. We shared; old friends, young friends, old not-so-young friends, and a collection of new friends shared the best that the day had to offer.

Earlier, while four of us waited for the shuttle that would take us from Agnew Meadow back to Mammoth Village after our hike to Shadow Lake I had the opportunity to observe a pair of Rufus Hummingbirds. This should explain my use of these amazing birds in my analogy. First, the male appeared across the road and darted about from flower to flower occasionally popping up to hover and turn this way and that, searching and looking over the landscape while checking us out as well. Soon his mate turned up and alit on a nearby bush. The male went into his courtship dance rising straight into the air twenty or more feet before diving straight down to his love interest. I’ve seen them rise up to fifty or sixty feet in more open country. Just as he passed her and before entering into his loop to rise again he let out an ear-piercing chirp, easily the loudest sound I hear from these tiny birds. After several of these displays the two rose together and spiralled round and round each other in a frantic dance. They broke off to taste a flower or two and then darted off into the forest.

I felt just like my little friend as I darted around the picnic area and then pulling back to hover and turning, first one way then another, while I considered where to pick up a little nectar of someone’s glorious day. It was such a pleasant sight; twenty-eight of God’s people in animated discussion and reliving experiences while on wilderness trails of varying difficulties. We all should have been tired and ready for some quiet in-room contemplation but we couldn’t get enough of being with each other. This was as it should have been.

We were blessed with an infusion of LCPC kids in Mammoth for a week of altitude training with the CVHS Cross Country Team. They’d run, worked out, ran some more, and yet, were as lively (and lovely) as the rest of the WL Tour people. We ate our picnic dinner that was largely designed and prepared by our own Chef/Pastor Andy Wilson. That guy is a dynamo. Dinner was followed by a wonderful discussion about the local geology as delivered by Doug Given. The group gobbled up the information like desert only to follow it up with insightful questions asking for more.

I had full day, first waking early with hummingbirds darting about my stomach (have to maintain theme here) with thoughts of starting off the week with my devotion knowing that the brokenness that had been building for days was just below the surface. I shared my little story, choked up and let a tear fly as I am apt to do, and all in the midst of heroes in every sense of the word. Missionaries were sprinkled about through the group like raisins in a prime cup of Raisin Bran cereal; the whole Kennedy family who serve in Cairo, Egypt here for R&R, Young Chul Oh serving in northern Thailand here on an educational sabbatical, Lauren Gossett back from Chiang Mai, Thailand, and Holly Wilson recently returned from Nepal where she was serving during the massive earthquake that rocked the Himalayas. There were many DR trip veterans and a bunch of friends who’ve served with me on Mission Arizona trips. I was at the same time humbled and uplifted.

As I sit back just now and hover in my chair, first looking at the previous paragraph I’ve just written, then to my notes, then to the list of WL ’15 Tour members, I can see that each one is God’s servant in a critical mission in His Kingdom. ‘Twas grace that brought us together and we found restoration, recuperation, and renewal.

I assure you that the days that followed were full of the same. Praise God!

In His grip, jerry