Many years ago a chick in a nest noticed something. At the end of every day it got dark. But every morning, after the chick had started tweeting that it was hungry (through its beak not the microblogging site) the sky grew lighter and eventually the day arrived.

The chick was fascinated by this. Every morning it would tweet its little heart out and every morning the sun would rise. The chick told its siblings and encouraged them to tweet too – to ensure that the sun returned each day.

Chicks in other nests started to complain about being woken up so early by all the tweeting, but when the first chick explained that it was their tweeting that guaranteed that the sun would come back they joined in too.

Once the chicks had fledged and left the nests they all continued the tradition because they didn’t want to risk the sun not coming up. Everywhere they went they told other birds about it and the news spread far and wide. Migrating birds took the news to other continents and it was not long before birds all across the world knew that their tweeting in the morning was what guaranteed that the sun would come up.

Each new generation of birds was told that their tweeting in the morning awoke the sun from its slumber and each new generation of birds tweeted their hearts out each day. They believed that they were making a difference to the whole world – this was their contribution to life.

Different birds tried to outdo each other with the length, volume, quality and variety of their morning tweeting. Over time the real reason for the morning tweeting became less important than the tweeting itself. When asked why they tweeted in the morning they just shrugged their wings and admitted that they didn’t know why they did it – it was what birds did, wasn’t it?

Today, all across the world, birds tweet each morning. Many of them actually don’t start tweeting until the dawn has started to arrive, the sky has started to lighten and the sun has started to peek over the horizon. But that doesn’t matter to them. What matters is that they tweet because that’s what they do in the morning, isn’t it?

Do we ever stop to ask ourselves why we do what we do? We do it because we have always done it. We do it like that because we have always done it that way. We do it because we don’t know any different. We do it because that’s what we do.

Tweet, tweet, tweet.

Be blessed, be a blessing.

(It’s been said that when Jesus returns the last seven words heard (uttered by Christians) will be, “We’ve never done it that way before!”)