“Sing to God anew song.
Sing to God, all the earth.”
~Psalm 96:1

On Wednesday morning, I sat down to have a little time of reflection before I started what was going to be a full day. I was armed with the Lenten devotional I have been using and a new prayer book by John Philip Newell. Because it was such a beautiful, unseasonably warm morning, I opened the doors that lead out to the backyard deck. The smell of spring filled the room. Earthy, wet, scents of possibility.

The psalm meant to be prayed that morning was Psalm 96. The words above moved on my lips and in my head. But the sounds outside the open door were the ones that filled my soul. Instead of just reading these ancient words of the Bible’s songwriters, the birds  flying around our backyard were actually doing what the psalm implores. Singing at the tops of their little lungs!

Now I am not a birder by any stretch of the imagination so I cannot identify bird songs on cue. But I can recognize the sound of a cardinal, a chickadee and a robin. I heard them all on Wednesday morning plus some other songs I did not know. I sat as their melodic morning soundtrack welcomed the day. Just the day before I had been walking through the woods and heard a bird whose sound was piercing and unfamiliar.  I looked up to see an eagle soaring over the open marshy lake until it landed firmly in its large nest at the top of a tall but bare tree. I watched as it wiggled its lower body before finding a comfortable position with only its pure white head peaking out from the piles of pointy sticks.

These ones without words often put we more learned ones to shame with their ability to praise their Maker. I went to the scriptures to see the fullness of this psalm. “Let the heavens be glad, and let the earth rejoice; let the sea roar, and all that fills it; let the field exult, and everything in it.Then shall all the trees of the forest sing for joy before God.” Reading these words I was reminded of the drive earlier in the week through the farmlands west of the Twin Cities. The soil had emerged from under what snow and frozen matter we have had and was ripe with richness.The fields glistened.  The lakes, held captive in an icy state for months, now lapped with life as geese and swans bobbed along on the waves. Dark, brown earth gave way to brilliant green patches of grass coaxed into their color by the rains of the days before. Their greenness shocked my eyes accustomed to the dullness of winter. If I squinted my eyes just right, I could see the yellow-green buds on the trees opening their presence to the sun. They were ready to sing for joy.

All these seemed to be full of praise expressed without words. They were singing the song of Creation with their very being. When placed in the context of Psalm 96, this kind of adoration is humbling to this human. I was silenced by their shining forth in a way that  I can never attain. The song of those birds waking to the gift of another new day made my sad attempts at greeting the same day pale in comparison.

In the end I had to comfort myself with the notion that just as these acts of the Creator were full of praise in the ways they know to do and be, so I must use the gifts given to me. Thoughts and words. Eyes and ears. Nose and hands. Imagination and prayer.

May the One who breathed us all into being accept these humble acts of presence offered by one without wings or roots or wave or leaf. May they be held as gently as are those of my fragile, fellow travelers.