My daughter, Amy, and I were getting ready to drive to the supermarket. I’ll put on some Colton Dixon in the car, I thought. Amy liked his songs. I liked the Christian message in them. I was always looking for ways to encourage my daughter to pray, but she was a natural doubter—and a teenager! If I pushed too hard, I knew she’d stop listening for sure.
We stepped down the three stairs that led to the garage and found my husband, Bob, standing by his old Mustang, looking up toward the ceiling.
“It’s a hummingbird,” he said, pointing to something tiny floating far out of reach. “He flew in, but I don’t think he knows how to get out.”
“Maybe he was attracted by the red car,” I said. “It’s bright like a flower.”
“I don’t think he feels safe in here,” Amy said. “Doesn’t he seem kind of worried to you?”
For 30 minutes, the three of us tried everything we could think of to get the bird out.
I tempted him with some peach juice that I’d poured into a shallow cup. No luck.
Amy ran out to the yard and picked a colorful peony. She followed the hummingbird around the garage, holding the flower high, but the bird kept his distance. Finally her arm dropped in defeat.
The bird perched on the garage door mechanism in the middle of the ceiling. I watched him, standing by a pegboard where our snowsuits hung for the summer. “I give up,” I said. “There’s nothing else we can do.”
“Why don’t we pray for him?” Amy said.
I stared at her in surprise. Had my doubting teenage daughter just suggested praying for the bird? And why hadn’t I thought of that?
“Jesus, please send the bird down so we can help him,” I said. We all turned our eyes back to the hummingbird. The more he flitted, the more we fretted. Thirty seconds. Forty-five. The bird flew up. He swooped down toward the pegboard and slid down a snowsuit—right into Amy’s waiting hands.
She cupped him gently in her palms, walked quickly outside and let him go.
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