While We’re All Sitting Here Waiting….

Night sky streaked with soft pinks and powder blues, whisping with stretched-out clouds, lacing the beautiful evening in a way that says, “I am here”.

Baby bunnies fill my morning lawn. A chipmunk leaps to the one bird feeder I placed in our weeping tree. He flies from the branches, dances along the edges, then spins like a carousel at some circus amusement.

My three-year-old and I capture the image before throwing our heads back in laughter at such a comical sight.

I stop as I write this. It’s barely 6:00 a.m.

A young coyote was skipping among the baby chickens. I open the door, clap my hands, he runs part way into the open field. Until, I flap my arms. Then, he leaves.

The newly cleared property leaves him nowhere to hide. And our baby chickens are spared.

I glance and see wildflowers growing. Where other people might plant asparagus or cucumbers, our garden has sunflowers and a whole package of wildflowers.

Because beauty is worth growing, even if it doesn’t produce something capable of digesting.

Because aren’t we all so tired of digesting? Consuming? Receiving? Gluttens from the excess? Weighed down by the mass of stuff we can “get” so that we might feel better?

And when did life and nature and this whole entire planet become something we take from, without first giving?

When did we begin walking on this earth to cut down, tare up, take and keep taking?

Didn’t God give us this green earth to manage and maintain? Tend to as He created?

“The lust of the flesh. The lust of the eyes. The pride of life.” I wake with these words for some reason.

I don’t know why we complicate sin, mix it wildly in our own justification until the darkness of evil becomes grey and purity no longer exists?

So many have sold their souls for a price?

They have exchanged the beauty of just living life for clawing at the wind, dying for gain, burdening themselves for more greed; that often, in my eperience, has only led to pain.

Yet, our thirty-year-old cherry trees keep baring fruit. Not asking for payment as we pluck from its branches. It gives and keeps giving…

The nature of everything perfect.

It doesn’t sit selfish or in pity, or think it deserves some kind of reward and returned special treatment.

The birds sing a morning song from the evergreens surrounding me. They don’t demand anything. They don’t ask if I’ve earned such a beautiful morning song.

They don’t command or withhold or expect to be rewarded from the fragrance of music they project into the air.

They are givers. All of nature. Givers instinctively.

So, when did we all become such takers? When did humans shrink to not only ask, but demand the earth offers payment for who they have become, the science they have “learned”?

Aren’t we all beggars? Beggars from one another? Needing the branches of green reaching the heavens, to filter out our air? The bees to pollinate, so life becomes sweeter? Water to keep moving, so it stays drinkable and pure?

Doesn’t the earth and all it’s grandiousness humbly work together?

Yet, humans play god? Rising in their self-made Lordship, commanding to be seen? Taking without apologizing? Receiving, but rarely giving?

Did the Indians who patted this dirt with elk skins on their feet, raise their fists to heaven and insist that they were fed?

Or did they lay low, surrender to this land? Accept natures plans to give and take in motion?

Ebb and flow of tides, rise and set of sun, moving of the moon as the snow-filled mountains turn to blazing heat.

It’s all perfectly balanced. Why did we ever wrecked that? Taking the brush in our own hands and insisting all of life gets painted our own colors, whatever those might be.

We stomp like self-made giants on creatures and creation, the world and worse yet, eachother.

Don’t we know, those who rise in power, using force and selfish cooercion will always destroy what’s perfect?

Control is an evil, taken by Jezebel, used by Saul, mastered by Satan.

We are not large and strong, but weak and helpless. Willing vessels, only flowing where this river of His purposes takes us….if we ever want to grow well.

Trees forced to grow in unhealthy soil, will always ripple and fall. But a tree planted by healthy waters, produces fruit, just naturally.

Fruit that does not need to be forced in the face of the weaker among us. And fruit, not just for one or for only the person planting or producing it.

True fruit feeds all and is possessed by no one, except the maker of the trees.

So, while we are all waiting. While the weeping tree stands gallantly in my field, birds calling the morning sun to rise, and bunnies hopping on dewy grass, feeding off the land, without haste or want….

What if man stopped demanding and commanding the Lord to come save us from the mess we have all dug, from the selfishness of our own wicked hearts, the evil of our own soiled hands…

And instead, we bowed with the earth to The Great “I Am”…

Coming on a horse, riding towards us to save us from ourselves.

And instead of lifting our chests in pride, we looked around at the world, soiled by hate and divide…and we humbled ourselves like the trees. Shading the blazing sun from desecration of everything underneath.

And we learned…we are not giants…

Saviors. Little gods “fixing” the world from our own coercion, control, data and forumulas…

But servants only to one.

When did we forget that we are the creat-ed. Soul-given saints working together for a greater good, one we have sadly lost sight of, amidst beauty, while evil tries to destroy us.

We were created to shine, lift up, encourage, bless and nurture everything all around us. 

So, what if instead of us all being desperate for Christ to come….

God is actually waiting on us. Giving us one last chance to bow our hearts to heaven so we might ask Him to forgive us, for the terrible mess we’ve made…

After desecrating this beautiful earth he has given us.

While the birds keep singing. And no one pays them for their song.