The Hawk of Providence

One Saturday morning in May of this year, I was studying in our sunroom in preparation for a message I would teach the next day at church.  I should have been able to write with ease, for the key verse in my sermon illumined this great truth about Jesus Christ: “In him all things hold together.” – Colossians 1:17.

But my heart was filled with such pain that morning, my fingers just laid on the keyboard without moving.  I was struggling to believe that the God who held creation together was also holding me together.  My faith needed a little help, and God mercifully provided it.

As I looked out the window, a majestic hawk gracefully flew into our backyard, landed on our birdbath, and played in the water as if he were a carefree sparrow.  In the twenty-five years we have lived in this house, we had seen a few hawks land on the fence in the back of the yard.  But they never came close, and they never stayed long.

But this hawk was strangely comfortable splashing in that birdbath and spreading his mighty wings.  For it seemed that his mission was to comfort the pastor on the other side of the window.  In that moment when I struggled to remember that God was in control of my life, He used part of His creation to remind me that He truly does control all things.