Shannon Costello

This morning we watched a hawk eat a wren. First she plucked it, anchoring it to the branch with her talons while she worked at it with her beak. Later we saw her tearing off long chunks of red flesh and gulping them down. When she was done she sat in the tree for a time, ruffling up her feathers and polishing her beak, a commonplace avian act now fraught with terrible significance.

Although I examined the scene carefully afterwards, I found no trace of beak, legs, or bones—only feathers. I have six of them in the house now, short gray and brown feathers marked with the dark brown bars that characterize the plummage of a wren. All six were yanked out in one clump.

Scripture provides a way to interpret life. It is also true that life helps to interpret scripture. Today I thought of passages that tell us that God knows when a sparrow falls to the ground or that He “hears the young ravens when they call”. Those verses are soothing. They are part of the argument that a God big enough to know the universe down to the smallest detail will certainly know about whatever problems you may have. However, it is a mistake to interpret such verses as promises of physical provision and safety. I’m sure God hears the young hawks when they call, too, and provision for one is death for the other.

It is uncomfortable to realize that God could allow something I would view as bad to happen to me. If I focus solely on that, the danger is that I may conclude God is not worthy of my trust. Yet unpleasant events on earth are woven into a perfect plan for those who bend their steps toward God. Job described such a life journey when he said, “Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him.”