It’s hard to argue with Tennyson about “nature red in tooth and claw.”  The rule of the jungle and even the suburban backyard is eat or be eaten.  Even if you are a vegan from the top of your organic head to the soles of your pleather shoes, it is still a verity that nothing lives if nothing dies.

Competition for food, for territory, for suitable mates, is part of the animal kingdom (and that includes us).  That’s why I was so taken with a scene in my backyard the other day.  It’s not unusual for the bird feeder to look like a Darwinian hellscape as larger, more aggressive birds chase away the smaller ones.  In fact, backyard bird feeders can be a happy hunting ground for hawks who have no interest in seed but will happily dine on other seed-eating birds.

But when I looked out the other day I saw all kinds of different birds, from the little chickadee and titmouse to the much larger woodpecker and even a female cardinal perched on the birdfeeders all at once.  Pecking side-by-side or flitting in and out of the feeders, they seemed to be taking turns.

As I watched them, it occurred to me that this scene was not evidence that our backyard birds are particularly good-natured or well-mannered.  What this scene demonstrated most clearly is that there was enough for all of them.  Thanks to Sandy, who shovels through waist-deep snow to keep the feeders filled, the birds do not have to compete for food.  There’s plenty for everyone, including the squirrels who grow fat and happy on the seeds that fall to the ground below.

I think all of us know that when we perceive scarcity it does not bring out the best in us.  If we fear that there will not be enough to go around, we become anxious and fearful.  This fear can lead to hoarding and selfishness – and larceny and worse.

Most of you reading this are not plagued by real threats to food supply or safe, warm shelter.  (It’s good for those of us so blessed to remember that there are many for whom hunger is not a metaphorical condition, and to help them in all the ways we can – individually and societally.)

For most of us, our greatest sense of scarcity is the shortage of time – the scarce resource of life itself.  How can we reconcile the number of items on our bucket lists with the actuarial odds against our accomplishing them?

Unlike the birds, it’s a different kind of hunger that makes me feel existential scarcity.  Even as I am reading a great book, I often feel like there are so many books I should have read, so many I want to read, so much I will never know.  Dying in my ignorance looms before me as a tantalizing hunger that I know can’t be satisfied in this short life.

But there’s an answer to this hunger.  I believe that there is an eternity to keep learning and growing.   There will be time for all that a soul could desire and plenty to supply our deepest needs and hungers.

I don’t know what triggers your sense of ‘not enough-ness’ that reminds you of how brief this life is.  It’s probably not unread theology books.  But I do know that the promise of the Kingdom is that there will be enough for all. 

We still need to help the poor and open the books on our shelves here and now, but there’s coming a time when all will find a sufficient supply of all we need.

Prayer:  You keep my feeder full.  I shall not want.  Amen.