Splat!
“What on earth was that?” exclaimed Linda.
The answer to her question came by way of piercing whistles and blood-curdling screams. I nearly scalded myself as I ejected out of bed slopping my morning coffee. Peering out the bedroom window to the top of the hill a hundred feet from our place, I got a bird’s eye view of what was causing the ruckus. It was of course birds. Big ones.
Smack in the middle of the road, at the top of the hill was a good size squawfish, still wiggling and writhing in the dirt. Power-diving it with angry, piercing aerial whistles was one of our good neighbours, Osprey. Strutting back and forth on the bank a couple of metres above the fish, providing the blood-curdling screams, was one of our not so good neighbours, a seriously cheesed white-headed buzzard better know as Bald Eagle.
“It looks like Osprey was fly fishing, caught a big one and Eagle tried to hijack the flight,” I said. “The only problem seems to be that this time Eagle’s timing was a bit off and he missed catching the fish in mid-air. The fish smacked onto our driveway and Eagle and Osprey are currently negotiating.” Linda could barely make out my commentary over the negotiations. She bounded out of bed to peer out the window and see for herself.
“Those two clowns,” she said. “All summer long, day after day, the same scenario plays out. This is a new twist for an ending though. I can’t ever remember them fish-bombing our driveway before.”
We stood at the window with our early morning coffee, watching as the negotiations ground to an impasse. That’s when the two crows showed up and silently perched on a tall spruce tree nearby to see how things would turn out. “Look,” said Linda, “now the Prodigals are here to take advantage of an opportunity.”
And take advantage they surely did. Osprey, a confirmed mariner, would not land on dirt to claim the catch of the day. Eagle was too much of a chicken to climb down the bank to steal the game. So after a time they both left and the two crows moved in and took advantage of a wonderful opportunity. They had a feast.
Linda had saved the lives of these two crows over the winter. For some reason they never left for warmer digs in late November like crows usually do in these parts. I think it might have been the fact that one of the two was a small sickly chick, perhaps a weaker sibling to the other, and not up to any long trips. We started calling them the Prodigals. At any rate, we took a real blast from an arctic front in December and the two of them perched on our bird feeder looking like death frozen over. Linda bailed them out with some deer fat and homemade bread scraps thinking that if they survived till the first Chinook wind they would leave.
But they stayed, through the North Pole’s opening performance in December, through the three-week command performance in January and the late season holdover in February. It turned out the winter was the coldest in years. Through it all the two crows survived simply on opportunism. Each day Linda would put sunflower seeds in our bird feeders for the usual winter crowd and the crows would appear out of nowhere for their share. She would put out peanuts for the squirrel and bingo, there were the two crows for a share of nuts. She would put out fat for all the various woodpeckers and the Prodigals would be Johnny-on-the-spot, taking opportunity of some of that. After her regular morning walks with Bud the Lab, Linda would put out a special morning ration of bread scraps for the two crows. The Prodigals would silently wait for her on the spruce trees outside the house. They would then follow Linda and Bud on their walk, hopping from power pole to power pole as they went. And then they would wait patiently outside the door for Linda to hand over the bread when she returned.
The Prodigals were the best opportunists I have ever seen, not overbearing but patiently waiting to take advantage of every opportunity that presented itself. And they thrived through a winter that killed many birds, including a batch of early arrival robins that succumbed to a vicious cold snap near the beginning of March. We tried to feed the robins but they would not take advantage of the break, preferring death to opportunism.
Opportunism. As I reflect upon the Prodigals I can’t help but think opportunism is given a bad rap these days. If someone is described as an opportunist it is almost always a pejorative reference. But really what are we as to the grace of God except opportunists? Easter really nails this for me. As Paul put it for the Christians in first-century Rome: “But God has shown us how much He loves us — it was while we were still sinners that Christ died for us! By his blood we are now put right with God; how much more, then, will we be saved by him from God’s anger! We were God’s enemies, but He made us His friends through the death of His Son. Now that we are God’s friends, how much more will we be saved by Christ’s life!”
Now doesn’t that make you feel like one of the Prodigals as to the saving grace of God? It sure does me. When I could not provide for myself, God gave me an opportunity, one that I didn’t deserve. And God reaches out nail-scarred hands and says to me, “Be a prodigal. Be an opportunist. Take advantage of the life I give. Believe!” As a person saved by the grace of God, I am an opportunist, feasting on the table He provides. Hallelujah!
But if this is true about the saving grace of God, how much more so regarding the sustaining grace of God. More and more I have become aware that I don’t sustain myself. God by His grace sustains me. I am a firm believer in hard work and I used to believe that my hard work was what sustained me. But as I have aged, I have realized that what I need to thrive or even survive, I can’t provide for myself. These things seem to be handed to me as opportunities. And as I come to realize this, I am discovering what it means to be an opportunist and truly a grateful and thankful prodigal. The words of Annie Johnson Flint say it well:
He giveth more grace
when the burdens grow greater;
He sendeth more strength
when the labours increase.
To added affliction
He addeth His mercy;
To multiplied trials,
His multiplied peace.
When we have exhausted
our store of endurance,
When our strength has failed ere
the day is half done,
When we reach the end of
our hoarded resources,
Our Father’s full giving is only begun.
His love has no limit;
His grace has no measure.
His pow’r has no boundary
known unto men.
For out of His infinite riches in Jesus,
He giveth, He giveth,
and giveth again!
