25/06/2021
" The Cry of the Raven" (From GenCF Daily Light, Day 185)
“Who provides food for the raven when its young cry out to God and wander about for lack of food?” (Job 38:41)
God’s love for His creation extends to every creature that has life – even ravens – even us.
If we are acquainted with ravens, we know that they are not the loveliest of birds. Black from head to foot, they pale in beauty to almost every other bird God has created. Even the common sparrow is more colorful than a raven. If ravens were to enter a beauty contest with other birds, they would certainly always finish last.
Their speech is likewise contemptable. Unlike the many birds whose melodious songs wake us with joy in the morning, the squawk of a raven is downright annoying. It is hoarse and rough and sometimes so loud that its monotonous screech is enough to put anyone’s heart on edge. If ravens were to enter a singing contest with all other birds, they would most certainly lose that as well.
And yet the Lord notices them, and He cares for them, and when they cry for food, He listens and He provides for them. Their needs do not go unnoticed by their Creator, and even if one of these falls to the ground, God is not ignorant of that and feels the pain.
If the Lord so cares for such ugly noisy birds, how much more does He care for us?
We may look at the blackness of our hearts or the many stains in our character and consider ourselves too ugly in God’s sight to be noticed by Him. Or we may evaluate our prayers and find them so disorganized and unpoetic that we conclude God would never listen to them.
And yet, if God is willing to listen to the squawk of an ugly raven, how much more certain is He to listen to our cry to Him? And though angels may wince at what and how we pray, for God Himself even the unpolished prayer of one of His children is more beautiful than all their songs put together. Our prayers, after all, reach Him through the blood of His beloved Son.
Jesus did not come to die for the beautiful but for the ugly, not for those whose lives were lived as great melodies of worship, but those who sung their life-song off-key every time.
In the same way, He listens to our prayers, not because of how beautiful they are or how beautiful we are, but because He loves us. And he gave us the ravens to remind us of that.
