Listen to last week's web cast 08-17-2008

It was a cool autumn Thursday when my next-door neighbor, Anna, knocked on my door. She was flushed and breathless. “Our budgie flew outside. Can I go into your back yard to look for him?” I went out with Anna while her daughters, Carmen and Anita, ran down the street shouting, “Charlie! Charlie, come!” We could hear the bird’s cries, but couldn’t see him. While we were looking for Charlie, I received a call from my friend Darcie, and I told her the story of the lost bird. Meanwhile, Carmen had located Charlie in a tree, but he would not come down, and the tree was too high for Carmen to climb. She brought their other bird, Maggie in her cage to try to coax him down, but still he refused to come. Finally, Carmen gave up. At bedtime the children prayed that Charlie would come home. Then it started to rain Charlie had lived indoors all his life. The family had always kept his cage away from the windows because they knew he could catch a cold from a breeze and die. Now he was lost outside in the cold rain. The rain continued Friday, and on Saturday, a cold, wet wind howled through the trees. Charlie had completely disappeared. It was a crisp, cool Sunday afternoon when two girls, Brianne and Abby, were playing outside a mile away from my house. They noticed a small, blue-and-white bird lying in their front yard. Its wings were spread, and it appeared to be injured. A flock of crows was harassing it. The girls chased away the crows, but they returned again and again. Brianne’s mom, Mary Lynn, heard the girls’ cries. She came and covered the bird with a towel and put it safely in a cardboard box, She called the animal shelter, and they asked her to wait while they found someone to take the bird. Soon. Abby’s mother, Darcie, arrived to take her daughter home. When she heard about the bird they’d found, it rang a bell in her mind. With Abby’s help, she recalled that she had phoned me on Thursday, just as my neighbor’s bird had disappeared. Mary Lynn phoned me right away. I called Anna and told her about the found bird. When Carmen examined Charlie, and he was feisty and appeared healthy. The girls were ecstatic and took Charlie home to feed him and return him to his warm cage near his friend Maggie. The cold weather, wind and the rainy nights left no reasonable hope for a small indoor budgie, but God surprised them all with an answer to prayers.