Littlehampton Churches column: My new life-affirming phone app

I got a new app for my phone called Merlin. It’s amazing. What you do is you go outdoors and find where the birds are singing and then hit Record. It listens to the shrills and tweets and tells you instantly what bird you are listening to.

Last week in some woods in the middle of West Sussex, robins and wrens, woodpeckers and chaffinches, skylarks and blackcaps said hello to each other as my phone and I listened to their songs and calls.

I was lost in the joy of not just the beauty of their sounds, but in the knowledge that I could know what bird it was and what type of call it was making.

After a few weeks I have started to recognise my feathered friends without the app. Only yesterday I heard a blackbird moving through the notes – even before I could see it!

The joy of this experience comes from deep within. Our ancestors used the sound of birds to make them aware of any predators nearby, and so our brains find peace in the sound of bird song.

Jesus talked about birds because he knew how important they were to his audience.

When talking about fear and anxiety he said, "Look at the birds of the air," emphasizing that they neither sow, reap, nor store food, yet God still feeds them. He then asks, "Are you not of more value than they?

When talking about building community he tells people to “think of the tiny mustard seed and the tree that grows from it, so that birds can come and rest and meet and build nests and find safety”

When talking about peace he cries out with real tears: “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing.”

Big messages that we, like my new app, need to try and translate, and understand what it means to us as individuals, to our community and to our world today.