Easy

A mother wren has built her nest this year in a box that should have been thrown away. It originally contained wild flower seeds but somehow ended up stuffed with a wad of paper towels and left on the lower shelf of my potting corner. Ron and I stumbled across it during our preliminary spring deck clean up. By the time we found it, there were already five purple eggs clustered in the center of the carefully crafted tangle of twigs, leaves and bird feathers.

A powerful rainstorm rolled in a few nights after the eggs had hatched. The potting shelf is more or less protected by the eve of the house but the wind and torrential rain blew hard sideways and we both dreaded what we would find in the morning. We solemnly peeked in to see nothing but a fluff of gray down. It seemed to us that the baby birds had not made it through the storm. But then the mother appeared with a buggy morsel and the box squeaked with life. Ron and I were incredibly relieved.

Over the last week, the babies have grown quickly, due to the constant feeding from dawn to dusk. At first we couldn’t see them in the down except when the mother arrives, bug in beak. Then soon we could witness, from the discrete distance of the bedroom window, four bright yellow mouths open in unison and then shut again in one movement, as though choreographed, when the mother flies off. They also hunker down, disappearing into the depths of the nest and each other, when Ron or I come into view. Obviously the mother has warned them to be still when the giants come.

Ron commented that maybe we ought to help the mom by bringing worms up to the deck in a bowl. Ever the problem solver, he wants to make it easier for the little mother bird. I said I thought we ought not to interfere with the way this process was designed. After all, I reasoned, this script of birthing/living/dying had run quite smoothly for some good while without our assistance. The mother bird works hard and struggles, that’s true. She takes a calculated risk every time she flies away from her brood to go find food for them. If she met with misfortune her babies would die from lack of food. In her absence, a predator could slurp them up and she would return to nothing. All that work – for naught. And yet she continues in spite of the possibilities of profound failure.

I admit, I did step in the other day and put an umbrella over the whole area when another huge storm threatened to saturate the already wilting soggy box. Of course, neither the mom nor the babies knew they had been saved by the giant from potential drowning. But I didn’t need for them to know that I exist and am completely benevolent to reach out and help them. In the bird world this might have been labeled a miracle, if birds experienced thought processing like we do. There have been other nests in other years within my power to assist that did not come to fulfilled promise. One such nest of three hatchlings ended up as a meal for the resident neighborhood black snake last year. Though I don’t know what I could have done to prevent it, I probably would not have intervened with grandstand efforts anyway. The black snake has purpose and has to eat. The natural world looks cruel to us because we only look through underdeveloped and narrow reasoning that stems from emotionally charged and often misguided compassion. We see the moment and we see the hurtful occurrence and we leap to judgment based on our lack of understanding of how interconnected everything is. Good and evil and all that we define as such are simply threads woven through a much larger fabric, rather than random quirks of fate.

In the bigger picture it’s not hard to make the correlation between humanity and how we choose to define God. We want to see God as a senile old man/grandfather who doesn’t really know what He is doing. The Greeks and Romans made similar mistakes when they tried to define their gods. They assigned them super powers but fashioned them in the form of mankind with the same vulnerabilities and foibles. Those gods became quaint but empty myths because they were not founded in truth. The true God, Creator of the universe, is not like mankind, however. He created us in His image, body/soul/spirit but He did not make us into replicas of Himself as God. Therefore He doesn’t think as we do – His ways are not our ways. He does not plan and execute as we would. He sees what we cannot see. He knows what we do not. And yet, we shake our fists at Him when things don’t unfold as we would plan them. Babies die, children suffer, pain and disease cripples the innocent, natural disasters destroy lives. We think this is unjust and in retaliation we reject God because obviously He does not know what He is doing, as though it matters what we think. We punish God with our rejection. But we forget that He doesn’t really need us. He puts up with us because He sees farther ahead than we do, but in the end we are the ones who need Him.

Some say God doesn’t exist because there is trouble and suffering in the world. Some say He did exist once but He died or abandoned us. Some say God exists but is capricious and mean like the ancient Greek gods and therefore He should not be worshipped. We should boycott God. After all, we think we know better who and what God should be.

Just writing this makes me wonder why God even bothers with us at all.

One thing, though, that ought to be remembered, God could make it easy for us, and that is what we think we would do, if we were God. He could indeed turn us into nice little robots and eliminate trouble in this world, the only thing, by the way, that has ever refined us; the strongest steel is forged only by fire. He could destroy everything that hurts us and make paradise here on Earth. Oh wait, He did make a step in that direction, didn’t He? He originated mankind in paradise and then He had to send His Son to absorb the sin we found so easy to fall into. Suffering is, after all, the result of human sin. We don’t like to admit that though because it puts too much burden on us. But, in fact, the world is not the way that God created it and because of that, all are vulnerable to the affects of sin in the world. Why does one person suffer and another does not? Why do catastrophes happen to some and not to others? It is because sin is in the world and we are all connected to each other through our pain and joy and triumphs and failures. Crisis and devastation create opportunities for us to participate in the great refining process with humble righteous prayer. We think we are good and don’t deserve to suffer. Why do we think a perfect life is one without challenges? Who can say that an event that causes debilitating grief is not an end but instead an opportunity for a beginning? We interpret things differently than God, but does that mean we are right and God is wrong? We are the smart ones and God just doesn't see things properly?

This morning Ron and I, enjoying our Sunday coffee, heard the mother bird calling urgently. It was a different sound this time. Worried that something was wrong, I sneaked over to the window just in time to watch one of the babies fly out of the box. I called Ron to come see. For about an hour, the mother coaxed her fledglings out into the dangerous world. Turns out all five eggs had hatched. It had been so crowded in there we hadn’t seen the fifth hungry mouth. In small increments, the mother encouraged her kids to start their lives. She showed them how to hide in the pots under the canapé of the Hosta leaves until they gained use of their wobbly legs. Then she showed them how to try their wings and follow her to the side yard where there is a thick layer of leaves to hide under and plenty of food.

Two things we noticed. First, she didn’t feed them this morning. No bugs today. If they wanted to eat they would have to fly. Second, it was raining. Ron and I both agreed we would have chosen a sunny day to launch and we fretted that they were probably hungry. Just goes to show you how wrong humans can be when we let our touchy-feely sides rule. Birds have to deal with all kinds of weather in their lifetime. Might as well get started coping early. Those with earned skills stand the best chance of survival. The emphasis is on earned, of course. Hunger is a great motivator.

And then, there’s that issue of food. Ron and I forgot that bugs and worms come to the surface on rainy days. The mother bird knew this, of course. In this case, what we humans perceived as the downside of the rain was really a blessing. There was a short period of time when the birds huddled together under the Hosta leaves, even while the mom was urging them to follow her. They were afraid, no doubt. But if they had chosen the safe spot and avoided the threat of the great unknown, they would have languished and perished without the food that was waiting for them only twenty-five feet away. Would the mother have fed them had they refused to step out? Not likely. Amazing lesson there.

Do we really think we are smarter than God? Do we trust our own wisdom more than our Creator, Who made the rules (we don't like) and set everything in motion? Are we so afraid of the possibility of pain and suffering that we will not risk flight just because it isn’t easy? If so, we are way dumber than birds and don’t deserve the good things that wait for us, just out of sight. And that is the real point. Good things wait for us, even though we don't deserve it. Even though we judge God based on our lack of understanding and arrogance. Even though we define God by our own miscalculated standards.

The good news is: God made a promise to those who would choose to seek Him, in spite of the anguish of living here; in spite of the pain and suffering, that we brought on ourselves because of our limited vision of why we are here and what is expected of us.

"And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away." (Rev. 21:4)