Thank You for the Birds

Riley Van Cleve
1 min readNov 12, 2023

I sit on a bench atop the city of Los Angeles just in time to catch the 3:30 show.

A bird ensemble catches the wind in a choreographed dance.

I’m taken by their grace, the ease with which they skate the sky. With no one but me to applaud, they exit stage right.

God delights in pleasing us — why else could everything be beautiful for no reason?

I also think of kites, how the kite is one way men want to be like God: to hold the string and get a taste for how it feels to paint in the wind.

A cynical part of me thinks this is bad — it’s a cheap imitation!

But truly, I think that one of the purest desires man can have is to be like God.

Through creation we understand how much He delights in us and what He’s made: wanting to be like God is how we understand His character.

And to revel in the wonderful majesty of creation, to think it is very good — that is the avenue to know God.

Thank you for the birds.

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Riley Van Cleve

I want my life to be a love letter to you (all of you).