My Friend Rook

Every morning, when I’m up and dressed, I come down to the kitchen and one of the first things I do is to look through the kitchen window out into the garden.

And there, in the garden, I will almost certainly see a huge, rather scruffy, black rook. Mrs Rook makes me laugh. She also fills me with admiration. She`s a clever bird. You rarely see rooks alone. They are noisy gregarious birds who build their nests all together. They scavenge for food and eat almost anything.

But Mrs Rook has learnt where to find free food. She alights on our garden trellis, sharpens up her fearsome beak and then drops down to our lawn where we have bird feeders hanging – full of seed for siskins, greenfinches, goldfinches - all little birds.

Rooks are big birds. Rook is too big for the feeders. But she has learnt to fly up and crash into the feeder so that the seed comes flying out over the paving beneath. She gobbles it all up – but instead of swallowing it, the seed fills up the pouch she has under her chin. I call it her Rook sack.

She prances round the garden pulling out a worm or two. She doesn’t frighten the little birds.  And when her pouch is stuffed full of seed and anything else, off she flies to feed her rowdy nestlings in their crowded tree-top colony just up the road.

For the last few weeks, Mrs Rook has been out there in our garden nearly every single time I have cared to take a glance. All through the day she is there. Back and forth. Back and forth.

And now those invitation words of Isaiah - quoted above – come to my mind.  And that verse of Peter’s: ‘Like new-born babes, crave pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up in your salvation, now that you have tasted that the Lord is good` (1 Peter 2:2).

Peter says: Crave that spiritual food on offer from God!  Isaiah says:  The food is free! Come and get it!  God is offering us Life and growth, His Spirit. Don’t hold back.

We need to learn from Mrs Rook:  Get out there! Go for it! Get into the Word. Be greedy for God’s Word and allow Holy Spirit to feed us, grow us up in Him and be strengthened by His Spirit as He teaches us day by day.