FRIENDS:
FAIR-WEATHER

The woods are strangely silent now, where a few short weeks ago a thousand bird voices chorused the rising and setting of the sun.

Where are they, those rustic Carusos of the tree and bush, those Asaphs of the field and the hedgerow? Shame to tell, but they have gone from us just when we needed them most. They have fled to the south to escape the first breath of winter. They nested in our trees and fed in our grainfields while the summer was with us, but they forgot so soon, and they left us without so much as a friendly dip of a departing wing. And we are hurt a little, for we loved them well, and in spite of past experiences we trusted them, too. Nothing with so much melody in its throat could be faithless, so we thought, but we were wrong again—they have betrayed our confidence. They are gone, and while we are shivering beneath our turned-up coat collars they will be soaring over meadows alive with warmth and flowers and bright-hued insects.

Well, we can forgive them, for apparently nature made them to inhabit the sunshine; the frost kills their enthusiasm and destroys their song. They are summer friends, and we may as well accept them for what they are. But the flight of the summer birds can point up a moral for us if we are wise enough to see it, and the consideration of the birds might well make some of us uncomfortable. For there are Christians that seem built for the sunshine only. They require a favorable temperature before they can act like Christians—they have never learned to carry their own climate with them. Those who manage to generate an unbelievable amount of enthusiasm while things are going well disappear at the first sign of trouble. They cannot serve God in the snow—they are strictly summer birds. They desert us at the approach of winter.…

Far too many religious persons are summer friends.

Matthew 26:56; 2 Timothy 4:16; Revelation 2:4–5

This World: Playground or Battleground?, 53, 54.