Outside our kitchen window, on the back porch of our house we have a hanging basket of flowers with hundreds of bright blossoms cascading over its sides. The flowers brighten up the view out of the window, but another reason we like them is for the little visitors they attract.
These visitors are Rufous Hummingbirds. They are one of the smallest bird species in the world—two inches in length, and weighing about as much as a nickel. If you held one in the palm of your hand, you would barely know it was there.
Beating their wings about fifty times a second, they hover in front of the blossoms, withdrawing the rich nectar with their long needle-like bills. They never damage the flowers they feed from, and stay only a split second at each blossom, before they race off to the next.
Sometimes I’ve sat in a chair while these tiny birds have fed inches away from my head. I have often heard the whirring of their tiny wings before seeing them. Everything they do seems like it is done in hyperdrive.
Very seldom do you see them resting on a tree branch. Most of their day is spent busily searching for food. They have an incredibly high metabolism. When in flight their hearts beat over 1,260 times a minute. That’s over twenty times a second. Also, these amazing birds use up so much energy, they need to constantly feed on nectar all day long just to stay alive. If they are not continuously feeding, their little bodies would just drop dead from lack of energy. To conserve energy at night their bodies go into a state of deep sleep called, “torpor.”
Perhaps the most amazing thing about hummingbirds is the long distances they fly in their yearly migrations. The Rufous Hummingbirds which visit the Pacific Northwest where I live, fly a few thousand miles every year over difficult terrain such as mountains, deserts and forest. They make a yearly circuit from the Southern States and Mexico, up the Pacific Coast to the Pacific Northwest, and then south again along the Western edge of the Rocky Mountains. Only when you stop to think about how small they are, and how far they fly, can you get a true appreciation for these creatures.
Two Destinations
Did you know that every human being is making a long journey too? The journey begins when we are born and will only end when we leave this life on earth.
Those who have come to trust in Christ will be welcomed home to heaven. Heaven with all its glories is the end of their journey. In heaven they will get to see God with their own eyes, in the person of Jesus Christ, who loved them. On earth they had to walk by faith, but in heaven they will see Him. No sight in all the universe could be more wonderful. Has your heart ever been filled with joy seeing beautiful things like flowers, or hummingbirds? Well, in heaven people will be filled with rapturous joy that never ends when they see Jesus Christ whose beauty infinitely surpasses all the beautiful things He has made.
But not everybody’s journey will end in heaven. Many, because of the hardness of their hearts, will not respond to God’s grace. Those who die in their sins and unbelief will be ushered into the darkness of hell. The Lord Jesus talked more than any other person in the Bible about hell. He warned us about hell because He loves us and doesn’t want us to go there. There won’t be any beauty, love, or joy in hell—just misery, sorrow, pain, and suffering.
Those who come to love the Lord Jesus are travelling to heaven. But they are little travelers much like the hummingbirds are little travelers in the sense that the journey is far too great for them.
The hummingbirds need to feed continually to survive, and those who believe in Christ need a constant supply of grace to live. As that nectar is to a hummingbird, so is God’s grace to us. Without it we can’t live. The truth that we need a continual supply of God’s grace should humble us greatly. “Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and He shall lift you up” (James 4:1010Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and he shall lift you up. (James 4:10)).
I love watching the hummingbirds and I am saddened when every year in late summer they suddenly begin their migration back to warmer climates. But I know they have to eat to stay alive. Someday too, no matter how sad it is, each one of us will be called to leave this world. This world is, at best, our temporary home. We would be wise to treat it like we are only travelers passing through. Have you trusted in Christ as your Lord and Savior? “He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him” (John 3:3636He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him. (John 3:36)).
Travelers need a good guiding light to reach their destination. The History of the Dungeness Lighthouse makes that very clear.