“What is the price of five sparrows? A couple of pennies? Not much more than that. Yet God does not forget a single one of them. Luke 12:6 (Living Bible)
We have a little goldfinch who visits our bird feeder every day. We are pretty sure it is a male because he has a twinge of yellow. Male goldfinches lose much of their yellow color during the winter, only to slowly regain it in the spring and then become dazzling in the summer.
He comes every day, alone, and he sits in the feeder, leisurely munching at times. He comes alone and will stay for up to thirty minutes at a time. This is very rare, since all the other birds come as a flock, feed for less than a minute, and skitter off at the slightest movement around them.
We have developed several narratives about this little guy. We at first thought that he sat in the feeder, as opposed to perching on the feeder’s rail, because he was wounded and needed shelter and security. We wondered if he lost his mate, or if he were somehow shunned by the rest of the flock for unknown reasons. We have no idea about the story of this little guy, so we have made up a narrative about his back story.
We tend to make up narratives- projections if you will- when we have incomplete information on something. That is what makes psychological projection tests like the Rorschach Test, or the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) so interesting. Those tests give incomplete and vague information to allow the viewer to make up a story around it. In so doing, the subject reveals much about themselves.
We humans need to have some type of closure on situations. We need to try to make sense of situations where there is ambiguity. We need to have the satisfaction of knowing “the rest of the story”.
God has made us to be curious beings, made in His image, and seeking understanding and clarity. Yet, there is often no total understanding of situations, and sometimes we are left with simply trusting that “God has it and we don’t”.
We don’t know the true story of that little goldfinch, and we likely never will. But it has given us the satisfaction of giving the little guy a history and a meaning.
Prayer: Lord, thank you for the ability to imagine, to wonder, and to seek meaning, Amen
Reflections of a Counselor 