Wednesday, May 18, 2016

            Mother Robin needs a bigger nest – something with an extension or a new wing (pun intended!).  She has built her tiny nest just outside our sunroom door, atop an outdoor speaker.

She has brought forth four of her kind into the world. Her current nest is bulging at the seams. It will be only a few more days before there will be not enough room for all of her four fledglings. Somebody is going to be pushed out before he or she is ready for the big world, before it knows how to fly. It probably will be the smallest, the weakest, the least assertive, the one who gets pushed aside by its brothers or sisters when Mom comes a-calling with worms and moths to eat. There are raccoons, crows, cats and other predators who find wayward, little, flightless birds a very easy target. “Like a bird that strays from its nest is one who strays from home,” (Proverbs 27:8)

But for now, she is highly protective of her babies. Baby robins are as ugly as they come; truly only a face that a mother could love. Regardless of my opinion, she cares for them indeed. Talk about “helicopter parenting”! If I go out into the backyard, she will sit in a nearby tree, and chirp away at me in an irritated tone. The grackles are more aggressive as they will swoop at me or one of the dogs if we get anywhere near one of their nests. But Mama Robin simply keeps a guarded, anxious bird’s eye on me to see whether I am a threat to her nest. I’m not, but how do you explain that to a fretting mother robin?

One of my favourite images for God’s Love for us comes from Deuteronomy:

            As an eagle stirs up its nest

                         And hovers over its young;
                         As it spreads its wings, takes them up,
                         And bears them aloft on its pinions,
                        The Lord alone guided [his people] …  (Deuteronomy 32: 11)

God’s Love hovers near-by as we take flight into the world. Sometimes, we are not ready to fly as we might like to. Some find no room for them in their corner of the world, or not enough space to develop and grow and thrive. Sometimes, the weakest get pushed out and left to fend for themselves as brothers and sisters get fed first.  The world can be a beautiful place in which to soar, but that doesn’t mean there are not predators who will take advantage or cause harm.

God’s Love has our well-being always on God’s heart.  Some think that God doesn’t love them if they fall out of the nest, so to speak, and get hurt.  All I can say is to compare it to a parent’s love for our children.  I would do just about anything and everything to keep my children safe, that’s how much I love them.  But despite my love they have experienced hurts, pain, suffering, loss, failure, and the like. Does that mean I don’t love them because I couldn’t always protect them from any and all harm? Of course not. All I could do was to love them unconditionally as they went through the challenges.

It is not a perfect analogy, perhaps, but this is how I see God’s Love encountering you and me and the ones who fall out of the nest. God hovers there, giving us support, strength and courage. “But those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles…” (Isaiah 40:31).

Dale