The Blackbird’s Song of Hope

Something a bit different ....  

Introduction

Of late I’ve been contemplating more and more the tension between the beauty and cruelty of nature; the beauty and cruelty that exists too between people. As I watch my grandchildren grow, I wonder how the world will treat and shape them, and I try to reconcile my belief in a good and caring God with a God who allows a world where survival so often demands suffering, competition, and death? Where humans, created in His image, inflict so much suffering on one another.

Theologians and philosophers have wrestled with this since the dawn of human self-awareness. However, this is not the place for me to review the various “solution.” I want to offer something more experiential.

Jesus’ teaching about sparrows and God’s love (Matthew 10: 29-31), doesn’t explain suffering - it affirms God's intimate awareness within it. God does not promise to remove every sorrow, but to be present in the smallest lives, in the falling of a single bird. In Christ, God is not distant from pain, but takes it on Himself. For Christians, this is a radical truth: the Creator becomes vulnerable, suffers, and dies. That does not erase the cruelty of nature or the moral evil of man, but reframes it. God is not the indifferent architect of suffering, but He is its companion and redeemer.

And yet … it may be that the question itself is part of our calling. To ask why suffering exists is not a flaw - it’s a sign of moral awareness, of love, of protest. The ache we feel when we see a wounded animal or a child in pain is part of our image-bearing nature. Perhaps God plants the question in us - not so we will answer it perfectly, but so we will seek, care, protect, love, and act.

(With thanks to Ray Sunshine for the photo)

Befriended by a Blackbird

Each morning, a blackbird visits me.

Each morning, at first light, he arrives - shadow-slick and bright-eyed, landing with ease in the hawthorn tree and then hoping to the edge of the garden wall. He does not sing at first. He watches. There is a quiet intelligence in the way he tilts his head. I sit and try not to disturb the silence. Then, when the sun warms the day, he begins. His song is not for me, and yet it fills me. Clear, fluted notes spill over the garden like spring rain. The honey suckle awakens; the foxglove’s drowsy bells stir. Each note feels ancient, yet new; holding the memory of the earth itself.

At first, he kept his distance. He would linger in the hawthorn, still and watchful. I would sit, careful not to move too quickly, sensing the fragile thread of curiosity between us. He studied me in those early days - not just my movements, but my silences too.

It started with crumbs. A crust of bread left on the stone ledge, half-intended. The next day, he returned and waited a little longer. Then it was berries, softened fruit, and seeds. I learned to sit still, to let him come closer - on his own terms.

Now, he greets me as though he expects me – an impatient call - no longer a visitor, but part of the day’s design. He hops to the table, his head cocked, wings twitching with anticipation. I say “good morning;” he replies with a soft chuckle of sound.

Sometimes he sings after he’s eaten, a low, liquid music that feels more intimate now, as though shared between friends. Not just a song to the sky or the trees, but to me - because I listen.

We keep a quiet company, he and I. A human and a bird, on the edge of two worlds. And I think, perhaps, he waits for me too. Not just for the food, but for the soft ritual of it - the offering, the trust, the morning shared before the work of day.

But some days he arrives with a raggedness to him - a feather askew, a tremble in the wing, a hollow look behind the gleam of his eye. I’ve seen the falcon pass overhead, swift as a knife. I’ve heard the cry of foxes in the night. The world is not always kind, not even to creatures as honest and beautiful as he. He sings still - but I know that his life, like mine, is shaped by things beyond his control.

He has become part of my rhythm, part of the long hours of waiting and wondering that mark the months of illness, of relapse, and recovery. Living with cancer has meant living with uncertainty; with scans, with scars, and with doubt. And so I find myself, like him, watching the morning light with hope for peace, but with caution.

Evolution, I am told, is how life grows. But it is a hard teacher. It refines with fire, not mercy. The blackbird has ancestors who survived by fleeing, by hiding, by fighting for every fragile breath. How can the Hand that shaped him also allow such fear to lace the very fabric of his being?

And so I ask, as honestly as I can: Why? Why would a good God allow His creatures to suffer so? Why is life shaped through pain? Why must survival so often taste of struggle? I don't ask in anger. I ask because I believe God welcomes the question. And I ask because I need the answer to be more than a slick line in a book. I need it to live inside my days.

In the blackbird’s song I hear something I cannot explain: not defiance, but hope. Not ignorance of suffering, but something that rises through it, transcends it. He sings not because the world is safe, but because it is still worthy of song.

And this is what I have come to know through my little friend’s help - not as a tidy solution, but as a messy, deep, slow truth: I do not worship a God who is far from pain. I follow a Christ who entered it. Who bled. Who wept. Who asked His own questions in the dark.

I believe that love outlasts the grave. That even now, even in cancer, in chemo, in the trembling hush between scans, in the anxious waits, something holy is being worked in me - not despite the suffering, but within it.

The blackbird sings, not because the world is easy, but because he belongs to it still. And in his song, I hear my own song: cracked, imperfect, but also offered to life.

Each morning, we meet again - this bird and I. We bear our wounds. We share what light there is. And somehow, in that space, I believe God meets with us too.

And I remember - Jesus did not promise a world without sorrow. He promised that not one sparrow falls to the ground without the Father knowing. He did not explain away pain. He entered it. He did not escape the teeth of the world - He met them, took them into Himself. A God who made the world, yes, but also walked in it. Wept in it. Bled in it. Died and was Buried in it - then was Risen to life and conquered death.

Jesus told us “Do not be afraid.” Maybe the blackbird survives not only because of his wings, but because of the God who gave him voice - and listens. Maybe it is not comfort that answers the ache, but Presence. Maybe love does not always shield us from the storm, but sits beside us while it passes through.

So I offer the crumbs, the berries, the open palm - not to change the world, but to love something small within it. A gesture of quiet rebellion against the cruelty, and a whisper of trust that grace still weaves unseen between the broken places.

He returns each morning, and I wait.

We are two creatures held in the same mystery. And somehow, in the sharing of seed and silence, I believe we are both heard.

Perhaps the mystery is not why suffering exists, but why beauty insists on blooming beside it.

And in that shared space - between my stillness and his trust - something sacred stirs. Something that does not answer the question, but walks with it.

And perhaps, for now, that is enough.

Still the question rises like mist from the earth: Why does he come back? Why do I? Why do any of us hope in a world that bruises its most fragile creatures?

It is not denial. The blackbird knows the danger. He has tasted the cold edge of winter, fled from the shadow of the hawk, lost fledglings to the cruel lottery of the sky. I too have known grief, absences that ache, prayers unanswered in the way I had begged they might be.

And yet - we return. He to the branch, then the table, and now to my cupped hands. We sit with the light.

I used to think hope was something soft. A kind of wishful thinking, a fragile candle to keep the dark at bay. But I see now: hope is made of sterner stuff. It is not the absence of sorrow - it is the refusal to let sorrow speak the final word.

And where does that come from, that deep and stubborn root? It comes from the Christ who knelt in the dirt with us, who took on a body, bled, died, and was buried  … but then, then came morning. And the stone rolled back. “He is not here,” they were told. “He is risen.”

That is the source of the hope that holds me; not that suffering is explained, but that it is not the end. That death, though real, is not final. That even the worst the world can do has already been walked through - and overcome.

The blackbird sings, not because the world is safe, but because it is being made new - even now, even in its groaning.

So I sit with him in the morning light, in a garden still marked by both thorns and dew, and I believe - however faintly, however falteringly - that love is stronger than death. That one day, all things broken will be made whole.

And until that day, we return. He to his song; and I to mine.

Conclusion

As a Christian, I hold to a hope that is not blind to suffering, but shaped by it. I do not believe in a God who stands distant from pain, but one who entered it fully - who became flesh and walked among us. Jesus did not merely observe the brokenness of the world; He bore it. He knew hunger, sorrow, betrayal. He died with a cry of anguish on His lips - and He rose. The resurrection is not a denial of pain and death. It is the defiance of it. A declaration that death is not the end, that love outlasts the grave. That somehow, in ways beyond my knowing, all things are being made new.

This is the source of my hope - not that suffering is explained, but that it is not the final word. That Christ has walked the dark valley and now walks it with us. That even in the groaning of creation, something sacred still sings.

So each morning, I meet the blackbird again. I offer what little I can. And in the quiet space between us - between my stillness and his trust - I hear an echo of that deeper truth:

In the end, we are left with mystery. A blackbird sings despite the falcon. A mother bird builds again after the storm. A child asks why. And somehow, in that fragile questioning, in that insistence on beauty amid suffering, something holy endures.

Each morning, we meet again – this little bird and I. We bear our wounds. We share what light there is. And in that space, I believe God meets us, too.

Love endures. Grace returns. And the morning always comes.

Prayer for a Wounded World

Lord of sparrows and of stars,
You see what falls,
You hear what sings.

In the quiet mystery of morning,
teach us to trust like the blackbird
to return, to hope, to sing
even through the shadow.

When our bodies are weary,
when pain takes root and answers feel far,
be our strength,
be our song.

You who walked the valley of death,
walk with us still.
Remind us that no wound is wasted,
no silence is empty of You.

Give us faith to believe
that love is stronger than death,
that mercy outlasts fear,
and that even now,
You are making all things new.

Amen.

Wishing all readers light in the mornings, strength for each step, and the quiet company of birdsong.