The bird feeder was empty yesterday morning. This winter, as always, the sparrows and juncos and wrens have kept me with an eye on the weather forecast and another on the bag of bird seed. I hate to let them down.

Sometimes I try to remember to fill the feeder at night, when the birds have already settled in their nests and I won’t scare them by unlocking the back door and walking out on the porch. Yesterday morning they disbanded to the trees at the perimeter of my back yard while I took down the bird feeder and refilled it. I felt like a terrifying giant in my big boots and winter jacket, an invader at their buffet. I wondered how I looked to them—how very huge and outlandish I must appear. Humans and birds alike may have hearts and lungs and blood, but none of our similarities are readily apparent and all of our differences are. I was there to feed them, but my presence scared them away.

Sometimes the circumstances that come at us look like they will be our undoing, because we measure and perceive them with our small minds. We’re so committed to our point of view that fear overcomes us. But things are not always as them seem, and the circumstances that look like they will destroy often become the underpinning of our salvation. It looks terrifying, but really it’s just God, filling up the feeder.