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Viewpoint from Rev Shaula Reilly 02/08/2024
 Rev Shaula Reilly
Vicar, St Andrew's Church, Gorleston
One of the coolest things I’ve come across this year is the Merlin app for smart phones, which identifies birdsong – you may have it yourself. I don’t know much about birds, but have always been curious to try and find out, so I find it totally amazing that the app listens out for birdsong and then identifies the bird that is singing. I was awestruck to discover on a wonderful walk at Burgh Castle recently that I’d heard a skylark as I crossed the field to the Roman Fort, a water rail in the reeds as I walked on the boardwalk, and a chiffchaff and a wren as I walked back up beside the woods. Who knew?
 Back home I’ve started using the app in my garden and I find it totally incredible that even though there are hordes of seagulls circling and hollering above the garden, the Merlin app is still able to pick out the quieter blackbirds, swifts and goldfinches, and quite often doesn’t even register the background cacophony of the various gulls!
It got me thinking about how in the busyness and noise of life, with so many different things competing for my attention, how can I learn to tune my ear to the distinctive voice of God – that unique melody that tells me of my belovedness and of God’s enduring love? In Zephaniah 3:17, the Bible says, “The Lord your God will take great delight in you; he will rejoice over you with singing”
It takes practice to learn to hear that genuine voice of love that is continually calling us back to God. I read a really sad article a while back about the regent honeyeater, a bird in Australia that has become so rare, that many of the birds no longer know their own song, having never heard it being sung. In the same way that children need to hear human speech to be able to learn to talk, these birds need to hear their song repeated over and over again
And I think it’s a bit like that for us, too. The more we are able to learn to hear that voice of love, the more that we will know ourselves utterly loved and precious – that song will take root in us and enable us to learn a different narrative about ourselves: so treasured that God himself would come in the person of Jesus to come and search us out, restoring us to be all that he had ever hoped for us
photo: Rev Shaula Reilly snuggled up with someone else's dog on Easter Sunday this year
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