I have a friend who is an avid birder. When I am at her house, we look out her kitchen window as she explains what birds are attracted to what feeders and flowers. I point out the antics of the crazy squirrel dangling from the green feeder that looks like a lantern.

I thought of her when I glanced at a recent feature in the New York Times titled, “Magic Tricks May Fool You, but These Birds Can See Through Them.” Even if I didn’t read it, I could send her the link.

Turns out, I read the article and now have a newly found respect for Eurasian jay birds. Researchers discovered that these jay birds are not fooled by the sleight of hand tricks that typically trick humans, even the old standby of the coin is in the left hand, now it’s in the right.

The researcher featured in the article performed three hand-to-hand tricks using worms for his feathered friends. One trick—the palm transfer—didn’t fool the jays at all. However, the human audiences were deceived by the trick.

What made the difference?

Humans focused on the human and his hands; the birds focused on the worm and picked whichever hand they had last seen it in. The birds weren’t fooled; they kept their eyes on the prize—the worm. The humans? Well, the humans did what humans do—they keep their eyes on each other, not the worm—which, according to the writer, was not the intended prize for the humans.

Perhaps another worm, the one humans mocked and scorned, is the prize.

I would do better to keep my eyes on that worm of a man, a dying man, one who had no reason to be in trouble yet loved me enough to give me the greatest prize ever.

Instead of zeroing in on this prize, I so easily turn life into an endless palm transfer magic trick, and keep my eyes on the human hands of magician-like siblings, neighbors, celebrities, politicians or friends. And then I do what humans do—compare myself to them—look at what they have that I don’t or I'm glad I don't have to face whatever. It’s either self-pity or pride. It’s about self-love that isn’t all that original of a sin.

I wonder if Psalm 22:6 was running through Jesus’ mind (“But I am a worm . . .”) when he told his disciples to “Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?” (Matthew 6:26) If those birds were Eurasian jays, you better believe they happily received food from the heavenly Father. Why would they look anywhere else? He held the prized food in his hands.

For us, the prized food is his hands, the nail-scarred rough carpenter hands, the shepherd's. hands that rescue the wayward sheep. Human comparisons fall away. The good news is that life is not an endless game involving sleight of hand. I can entrust myself to hands that hold the universe in place, hands that were held in place on a cross with nails, and hands that lavishly give me all I need: satisfying water, bread and wine, what I need for today and a feast to come.