Spring is the optimal time to notice hummingbirds and butterflies in our neighborhood. In this issue we reflect on these amazing little creatures.

Humming Birds who visit us on our back deck are appropriately named. First, they chirp, then hum, buzz, and sometimes roar. Their chirps call us to pay attention to their presence. Then they flit around the fake red flower on the side of the clear syrup feeder, not fooled by an artificial flower, but having learned that there is a sweet treat to be enjoyed.

It’s the buzz that fascinates me. How in the world can they flap their wings so fast as to make that distinctive sound? Just imagine the tiny creatures with shoulder muscles strong enough for up to 70 wingbeats per second – or 4,000 wingbeats per minute – while suspended in air. Or flying backwards! Only a Divine Being could create such an awe-some creature.

Meanwhile, "hummers", as we call them, enjoy their libations. With a tongue that flicks into nectar up to 20 times a second, the hummer consumes between a half to 8 times its body weight in one day. Likewise fascinated, son Trey and his wife Amy, attached their clear- bottom feeder to the dining room window to watch the hummers’ long tongues extend to slurp Amy’s special syrup, "Amy's Secret Sauce".

The presence of our hummers do remind me of the Creator God who sometimes gently chirps, and when I don’t notice, hums and buzzes, and finally sometimes impatiently will roar! At times God hovers. Many times, I sit on the deck motionless and simply observe. Oftentimes our hummers create a trance-like contemplation. Small wonders they are!

As I write, I notice a newly arrived magazine by my desk. The lead article is titled, “Why Am I Here?” Sometimes I think I am here simply to be regaled by small wonders. And to be called by a chirp or a gentle roar to awareness of God's presence.

Search more here or here.

Consider the butterfly, if you will. No, that is too much to ask: There are more than 19,000 species of butterflies!

So let us consider only one species, one familiar to most of us in North America – the monarch butterfly, with its bright orange wings. We see monarchs often here in south Texas, as they migrate north every spring. They spend their winters in the mountains of central Mexico, most of them in the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve in the Mexican state of Michoacán. From there, they migrate as far north as Maine and southern Canada.

As autumn arrives, the monarchs migrate south, returning to the place where they wintered the year before. For anyone who knows the patterns of migratory birds, all this sounds familiar. But there is one major difference: Monarch butterflies have short lifespans. None of them live for a full year.

The annual migration, from south to north then south again, requires four or five generations of butterflies. Those returning to the reserve in Mexico are returning to a place they’ve never been, to a place last visited by their great-grandparents!

And yet they return, year after year, for the cycle to begin anew. Scientists are learning more and more about how they navigate, but most would agree that the migration of the everyday, common monarch butterfly is a biological marvel.

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel once wrote, “Our goal should be to live life in radical amazement, [to] get up in the morning and look at the world in a way that takes nothing for granted. Everything is phenomenal; everything is incredible; never treat life casually. To be spiritual is to be amazed.”

Consider the butterfly. Be amazed.

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