I wasn’t that much different from this mama. She haphazardly crossed my path in a furious hurry, like a teenager with road rage and wings.
Her tweeting caught my attention each time I made my way up the cement path from my automobile to my front door.
I didn’t know she had a home. I thought she just despised me coming nearer to the big, bushy tree she flew into each night.
I didn’t notice, yet I have been her, seeking destinations, running over anyone who got in my way.
Then, one day, around my recent birthday, I peeked in the bush, hugging the house by the path I tred each day.
All was silent, until I stretched the branches with my palms and peered into the evergreen scented frangrance of that green, bushy mass.
There, I see it. Four little heads tucked under the feathers of a mother, now squacking a fruit tree away.
Babies! Of course! As a mother, I got that if danger got close to any one of my children, I would also be a road ragger, doing anything I could to protect them.
Love never sits by, watching the ones they love most get hurt.
I squeeled with excitement, told my husband who agreed to keep the tiny nest safe. Mama birds can reject their young, if they feel there is danger in any way.
I walked that path daily. Knowing the secret of that carefully made home tucked deep within the tree, close to our house, low to the ground.
I saw mama bird working faithfully to find worms for her family. And on hot days, I even watered our garden in hopes that worms would surface, so those babies birdies would survive.
Then, one day, I open my front door. A baby chick hops across the yard. I jump, seeing its danger….knowing our cat lurks by and is an excellent mouser.
I alert my husband. We look to discover all the babies birds are gone. Some are in the fruit tree where the mother had been chirping from on that very first day I noticed her babies.
But this one? This one couldn’t yet fly? She didn’t have what it took to take the few feet space and flap her wings until she made it back to safety.
As we inspected the situation, we began to realize what happened. “Did the mama bird push her babies out of the nest too soon?” I asked my husband.
“No!” He told me….
A few feet below that bushy tree that hugged our house, was our fluffy feline, using her claws, and already climbing again half way up the tree.
“The cat scared them out”, He instructs me.
My heart sunk as I realized the danger they were in. How would they stay warm? Would they ever be able to survive? How would the mama birth feed her chicks, if the life they had known was in constant danger from our cat?
How foolish had I been in the past, building the nests of my life in places that don’t last?
How many around me had put their families in danger….exploiting the weak and the vulnerable for what was easy and temporal?
This mama bird literally must have had to do nothing to build her nest. All the twigs were right there, in the tree, and the rest was fluff, from her breast. In fact, we didn’t even see this mama bird prepare for her babies.
Yet, God gives us good gifts all the time, and I wonder if we can be like that, discarding, not owning, misusuing whatever He has planned for us.
We like to do what’s easiest or most convenient. We use what’s around us, then discard any effort….
Worse yet, blaming God, when things don’t line up, or life doesn’t go our way.
Yet, His plans will not be thwarted, His ways are higher that our brokenness, and can heal the mistakes of our selfishness.
When my husband saw the baby birdy fallen from her nest, chirping, and hopping in front of our front door….He scooped it up, without even thinking. He brought that baby to her mama in the fruit tree….
And I wonder….
Doesn’t our Good Father do that everytime we fall?
Everytime we make bad decisions and we don’t know where to run? Everytime we fail to plan, make bad
decisions or plant our nests in places they don’t belong?
The mama bird waited for her baby, watched the man with a beard place tenderly that teeny, tiny chicky, in the fruit tree where her mom and siblings chirped a cheerful welcome.
I don’t know where you’ve been, what you have experienced, but today, I am thankful…
Our Good God can lift us from that place, put the lonely in families, draw us from our histories and replant us somewhere beautiful…
All we need to do is trust.
If I am honest, I have been the fallen chicky, the ignorant mother, the disruptive neighbor…
But I know, His grace is sufficient every time I fail. His love is unending, and this world pails in comparison to every good gift He brings.
We have a home and a family.
So, let’s stop living like we don’t. Our Father wants to carry us home.
