What a rattlesnake taught me about God

My wife spotted a Cooper's hawk in the shade under one of our trees eating a Mourning Dove yesterday.  The hawk ambushed the dove while the dove ate at one of our bird feeders.  The hawk stayed there, in the shade on the lawn, for over thirty minutes plucking feathers from his kill and eating breakfast, as we watched in awe through my spotting scope from the kitchen.  Doves are monogamous and the one that wasn't killed stayed nearby until the hawk left.  I think it was waiting to be reunited by its mate.  The surviving dove will mourn a little louder for a while.

Last week a rattlesnake got hit by a car near my house.  The neighbor boys brought the body over to show me.  We got out my dissection kit and opened it up.  As the sun set, there were fifteen neighbor kids circling me on the curb, watching with mouths wide open as I exposed it's organs and we took turns looking at its features through a magnifying glass. 

I'm an animal person.  Not merely a dog person or a bird person, I'm an animal person.  Petco loves me because I use a shopping cart every time I visit.  We have two ferrets, a bird, three lizards, a dog, and forty or fifty crickets in the house at any given time.  I have literally twenty five bird feeders and a birdbath in my back yard.  I believe that animals testify that God exists.  I cannot fathom that we happened here by chance. 

I believe that God gave us two huge gifts.  He gave us this beautiful planet, but he also gave us agency.  Some use this agency to hurt others.  Some use it to help others.  Then there is me, trying to figure it all out, sometimes offending and hurting others, and sometimes offering a hand, trying to be a good father, husband, neighbor, and son.  A lot of what is bad in life can be attributed to someone's bad decisions.  But some parts of life are just part of living in a mortal state, like the dove getting eaten, or the rattlesnake getting hit by a car, or my son getting type 1 diabetes at 8 years old, or me being born without a sense of smell. 

At the end of the day, as the sun sets, and the crickets start chirping, and the birds seek shelter for the night, life is a miracle.  It is a miracle that we are here.  It is a miracle to take a breath and move my fingers over a keyboard.  It is a miracle to live another day.  A rattlesnake taught me that.