Chippie the Parakeet.

Chippie’s life was normal for a caged bird. He sang from his perch and enthralled all who passed by . The problems began when Chippie’s owner decided to clean Chippie’s cage with a vacuum cleaner. She removed the attachment from the end of the hose and stuck it in the cage. The phone rang, and she turned to pick it up. She’d barely said ‘hello’ when ‘sssopp!’ Chippie got sucked in.

“The bird owner gasped, put down the phone, turned off the vacuum, and opened the bag. There was Chippie– still alive, but stunned. Since the bird was covered with dust and soot, she grabbed him and raced to the bathroom, turned on the tap, and held Chippie under the running water. Then, realizing that Chippie was soaked and shivering, she did what any compassionate bird owner would do, she reached for the hair dryer and blasted the pet with hot air.

Poor Chippie never knew what hit him. He never saw it coming. One second he was peacefully perched in his cage. The next he was sucked in, washed up, and blow dried by his own over.

A few days after the trauma, the reporter who’d initially written about the event contacted Chippie’s owner to see how the bird was recovering. ‘Well,’ she replied, ‘Chippie doesn’t sing much anymore he just sits and stares.’

It’s hard not to see why. Sucked in, washed up, and blown over . . . that’s enough to steal the song from the stoutest heart. Life does that to us all sometimes. Remember that as we face the light the shadows will fall behind us. Life is a journey, and the road is not always smooth. I have heard it said that life is what happens to us while we are making other plans. Focus on the goal – look up not around.

Sometimes the events of life overtake us to the point that we just don’t feel like singing. If there is anyone whose life could have been like that of Chippie, it would be Joseph and Mary – Sucked into the demand of Caesar’s census, she and Joseph had to travel days from the north of Israel to Bethlehem in the south to find no vacancy signs everywhere. Washed up in the violent tsunami of Herod’s jealousy she and Joseph had to flee with Jesus to Egypt. Blown over by that violent mob demanding her son’s crucifixion Mary experienced the full effects of the words Simeon prophesied when Jesus was eight days old. “A sword will pierce your own soul too”. If there is anyone from whom the song should have been stolen it was Mary. And yet her longest statement in the Gospels is in fact a song. The theme of this song allowed Mary to keep singing because Caesar’s politics, Herod’s megalomania and the crowd’s hysterics did not define Mary’s life. She was able to keep singing because she knew God’s purpose, God’s values and God’s justice are the golden melody that cannot be silenced. The song is recorded in Luke 1:46-55

So, remember that when you are feeling sucked in by political manoeuvring God’s purpose are above politics. When you feel swamped by a world that still declares “might makes right”, God’s values of the humble path have stood the test of millennia. When you feel blown over by the crowd’s hysterics that so often want to silence God, rememeber His justice is eternal and can never be blown away. .