My old friends have come to spend the spring and summer with us again. I haven’t seen them since last September, but here they are. I was telling my wife on Monday we should be getting ready because I knew they’d be here for their annual unannounced visit, and they would be hungry and ready for a meal.

Sure enough, a couple of days later they were here. I had just boiled the water added the sugar and put it in the feeder, my wife hung up the feeder and in less than 5 minutes we saw one of our old friends, a hummingbird. We plan for them to hang out with us for about 6 months.

Since the last time they visited, they flew thousands of miles, across the Gulf of Mexico to South America and back. Surely they can’t be the same ones who were here last year, can they? How on earth could such a tiny little thing find it’s way? Scientists who track their movements say, yes, in fact, they can and probably are the same ones who were here last year. They “remember” where we live and where we place the feeders.

How they find their way back to us is anybody’s guess. Scientists have many theories including hours of sunlight, the earth’s magnetic pull, the sun as a compass, their ability to notice and recall landmarks, or their sense of hearing or smell. All that is to say, nobody knows for sure.

I am content to say that our creator designed them with an internal geo-locator embedded that draws them back “home” to the place where they feel welcomed and nourished, where their lives are sustained.

Which makes me wonder, does God do the same for us? In his book Confessions, Augustine of Hippo, a fourth-century African bishop wrote “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.” Has God placed within each of us a spiritual locator that draws us back to God?

In the book of Ecclesiastes Solomon wrote that God has “set eternity in our hearts”. Is this the thing that ultimately draws us back to God?

Seventeenth-century philosopher and scientist Pascal wrote: “What else does this craving, and this helplessness, proclaim but that there was once in man a true happiness, of which all that now remains is the empty print and trace? This he tries in vain to fill with everything around him, seeking in things that are not there the help he cannot find in those that are, though none can help, since this infinite abyss can be filled only with an infinite and immutable object; in other words by God himself.”

If God loves the tiny little hummingbird so much that he would create an internal compass to help her find her way home across thousands of miles, wouldn’t he do the same in us? I think so.

May God draw us all to find our fullness, rest, and meaning in Him.