A few years ago my dad built a birdbox with my daughter. Every year, we have Eastern Bluebirds that visit and build nests in this box, lay eggs, and sometimes have babies.
As spring approaches each year, we have fun naming the “mom and dad” and we watch the drama unfold. We’ve had every manner of incidents with these eggs, from other creatures destroying the eggs to particularly tragic events last year with Han and Leia’s babies. We often talk about that one year we had baby birds that grew until they flew away!
So this year, we have once again welcomed a pair of bluebirds, but I have watched them with different eyes this year – partly marred by last year’s “incident” and partly shadowed by the news reports from around the world. I watched them fly in and out with twigs in their mouths, laying a perfect home for their eggs. Days passed – we didn’t see “Podo and Nurgabog”, and wondered if they’d moved on. But then today – I walked out and checked again – and there it was!
The most beautiful blue egg. And my heart leapt a little more than normal. Because in these days, we need every sign of hope we can find, right? And what is more hopeful than this? The fragile, impossible blue of this egg lying in wait for new life! Im grateful that birds don’t stop laying eggs because of what happened last year – we hold these things too closely sometimes, don’t we? Today, I want to release the concern, the worry, the memories of what has gone wrong, and I want to embrace hope – though it may seem as fragile as this delicate egg, the beauty it holds and the promise of future life is more than my heart can encompass.
“Forget the former things;
do not dwell on the past.
See, I am doing a new thing!
Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness
and streams in the wasteland.
The wild animals honor me,
the jackals and the owls,
because I provide water in the wilderness
and streams in the wasteland,
to give drink to my people, my chosen,
the people I formed for myself
that they may proclaim my praise. Isaiah 43
Our God is a consuming fire 