A Question for God

You know those funny questions kids ask God?  

"I asked for a puppy, why did You give me a baby brother instead?"  

"Did You mean for giraffes to look like that or was it a mistake?"  

Of course there is a question most of us have asked at one time or another, "Why did You make mosquitoes?"

I will admit to sometimes wanting to ask God similar questions.  Recently I've been thinking about this one:

Dear God,

Why did You give Colombia so many kinds of hummingbirds and only give us one?  I mean, I love our Ruby-throated Hummingbirds, don't get me wrong.  Thank You for them!  

But, it's the only one we have in the whole USA east of the Mississippi River (with the exception of an occasional kind that's out of its normal range).  

male Ruby-throated Hummingbird

You put over a hundred kinds in Colombia... a county maybe a quarter the size of the Ruby-throated range.  (I've read numbers anywhere from 147 species up to 162 of Colombian Hummers!)  Wow, that's wonderful.... but couldn't You have spread them out more?

Sparkling Violet-ear

They are all so beautiful! (There's a really neat video from BBC news at this link.  The first close-up in the video is of the next species of hummer and the second one shows a Violet-ear like the one above, with its ear feathers raised!)

Female Black-throated Mango

It was a real joy for me to be able to see some of them while I visited Colombia, Lord.  Thank you again!

(This one might have been a young one... it seemed to have quite fluffy feathers.  And, oh, that beautiful red tail.  Nice red beak with a black tip, too!)

 It liked the large white flowers of the tree it was sitting by.

I knew to watch the red flowers, too.  And You blessed me by having some Hummers come to them.

While I watched that flower, a Hummer sat nearby.  He drank nectar from the flower, too, but I didn't get a good photo.  Here he is:

Heliconia flowers are hummer favorites.  We don't have them in Pennsylvania, but we have plenty of other flowers they would like (at least during a few months of the year)!

Our flowers might be easier for them to drink from...

...this seems like it would be hard on the neck.

Well, God, I'm sure you had good reasons for giving Colombia so many Hummingbirds and us only one.  I'll try to be happy with looking at pictures of them.  (Here's a link with oodles of beautiful photos).

Just reading the names of some of them makes me happy, too, God.  

Ruby-topaz hummingbird,  
Violet-crowned woodnymph, 
Blue-headed sapphire,  
Glittering-throated emerald, 
Golden-bellied starfrontlet, 
Orange-throated sunangel, 
Blue-bearded helmetcrest, 
Bronze-tailed plumeleteer!   

These are all real birds that you created, Lord.  (See the whole list of Colombian hummers.) 

Some people think that Hummingbirds evolved (if people want to read about it, they can click here for an article from Scientific American).  

But I believe you are a VERY creative GOD! Amen.

I won't be ordering one of these t-shirts:

Dinosaurs to Hummingbirds?  I'm no 'Scientific American', but that seems like quite a stretch!