Our pet bird Joey is a cockatiel. Cockatiels are small parrots. Joey is gray and white with a cute yellow head. Most of the time he chirps away to show how happy he is. He can say a few words, and when he talks it’s funny to hear. He has a throaty little voice, and anyone not knowing the words he can say would find it hard to understand him.
One day someone in the family opened the back door while Joey was out of his cage, and Joey flew out the door. He thought he was free, but we were horrified. We knew that a pet bird outside is in danger and is very hard to catch.
We ran outside. He was still in our backyard tree. Our father got a ladder to climb and try to catch him, but just as he got close, Joey flew off.
We chased Joey all over the neighborhood for several hours. We tried holding up his cage when he perched on a store roof with a bunch of pigeons. Joey wasn’t interested. We called him and called him, holding out a finger for him to land on. But that didn’t work either. Joey was enjoying being free!
Joey was enjoying his freedom, but he didn’t know that soon it would be dark and cold. His fun was not going to last.
Eventually, we lost sight of Joey. Sadly, we gave up hope and stopped looking for him. We went back home ... and then we realized we still had one hope we had forgotten about — we prayed, asking the Lord Jesus to send back our lost bird. We knew that if the Lord Jesus wanted us to have Joey back, He could bring him back to us. “Things which are impossible with men are possible with God” (Luke 18:2727And he said, The things which are impossible with men are possible with God. (Luke 18:27)).
The next day we prayed again each time we looked at Joey’s empty cage. At last, someone called on the phone asking for Mother. “You don’t know me,” were the first words he said. Then he explained that he had Joey safe in his home, five blocks away from our house. He had found our tired, hungry, lost little bird in a tree in his backyard that morning. Climbing a ladder, he had talked soothingly to Joey for ten minutes, then carried him down the ladder in a baseball cap.
We went to pick Joey up, and we thanked the Lord Jesus for giving us our pet back again.
He didn’t know it, but when Joey flew out the door, he was lost, not free. He was flying away from the only place of love and safety he had ever known. Some boys and girls don’t know it, but they are lost, too. They may think they are free because they do what they want and don’t care about what God wants for them. But that kind of life will end in trouble. Each of us has a soul that will never die. It will live forever in heaven, or spend a terrible eternity in the lake of fire. God loves you and He will give you true freedom and eternal life in heaven with Him if you will only obey Him. What you need to obey is this: “God ... now commands all men [and boys and girls] everywhere to repent” (Acts 17:3030And the times of this ignorance God winked at; but now commandeth all men every where to repent: (Acts 17:30)). God wants us to be sorry for our sins and to trust in His Son, the Lord Jesus, for the salvation He freely gives. Then you will be truly free ... free of worry about what will happen when you die, and free to obey the God who loves you so much, because God will give you a new life that wants to obey Him. “If the Son therefore shall make you free, [you] shall be free indeed” (John 8:3636If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed. (John 8:36)).
Messages of God’s Love 3/16/2025