To Trap A Bird
Many were the things my friends and I did before we noticed girls. Aside from classes and homework, there were sports — softball, ping pong, basketball, etc. We even crafted our own boy toys like kites that gave us much enjoyment. We also made slingshots and traps for small birds.
Making the slingshots and bird traps was by itself exciting. We hit a few birds with the slingshots and caught some in our traps. But what we did with the birds later we did not enjoy.
Even then some adults trafficked in birds. Bunches of tiny cages with birds in them, colorful, tiny birds were peddled in our streets and in the town market by those who lived near the forest. They made interesting pets for children and adults who did not need to make traps and put their catch in small cages.
Looking back at what we did with these contraptions we built in our youth, I, for one, now realize they were not a good idea. I now regret using them to make these carefree happy creatures targets and victims of our childhood fancies and recreational activities. In my opinion, they did not make us the humans we should be. Doing what we did was not God's plan for these creatures nor for us. They were at least selfish, if not cruel, acts. For they unnecessarily deprived these innocent creatures of their freedom to live where their Creator put them.
The same is true with those who were more skilled than us to catch more birds with their more sophisticated traps. They deprived more birds of their freedom to fly the sky, live in their natural habitat, and sing. A patriotic song in my old country laments: "When a bird, with its freedom to fly, is imprisoned, it cries."
Speaking now of humans, depriving others of freedom occurred in ancient and modern history. Slavery is one of them. It was finally abolished. But it continues in the form of human trafficking, for sex and organ harvesting.
The Nazi concentration camps and now the Uighurs’ labor and reeducation camps of the CCP are also perfect examples.
Too, Muslim extremists terrorize and kill Christians whose lives they want to control, but failing in this, they shoot or behead them out of existence. Also, numerous people kill their own kind growing in the womb and even survivors do not escape this dastardly deed. The hapless victims number in the tens of millions so far here alone and hundreds of millions all over the world.
Chinese Christians are deprived of their freedom by the communist, godless, totalitarian regime which vents their anger on the God they do not know by erasing symbols of the people's faith and drives them underground like the early Christians into the catacombs.
Now in our beloved familiar place, people in power with the aid of Big Tech and the biased media are depriving fellow citizens of their fundamental freedoms. They censor and want to cancel those who differ from their vision of the world. The main victims are churches and people of faith. These neo-controllers have appropriated unto themselves the prerogative that belongs to God alone.
Man's inhumanity to their fellowmen is growing in viciousness and intensity.
To catch a bird, to encage a bird is to kill it. To do it to fellow human beings is a supreme injustice. It is an injustice that cries to high heavens.
When Cain killed Abel, God asked him: "What have you done?"
"For God so loved the world that He gave His Only Begotten Son, that those who believe in Him might not perish, but have eternal life."
We need to think, to do something about it, in addition to praying. #
“If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.” (2 Chronicles 7:14)
