Harmony?

My birdie hotel...I've been watching it since March, eager for the Purple Martins to reserve a room.  Sparrows quickly moved in, and for a few months have annoyed me, because pretty much anywhere I have provided a house, here and in my Bluebird house, they have moved in and taken over.

Last week I began to see a lone Martin checking out the hotel.  As the week passed, it started coming around more and more, with the sparrow staring it down each time it perched.  One Martin turned into to two, into three, and finally into four.  Since March, I have been wanting the Martins to come in and kick the Sparrows out....until...the babies were born, and now I just want them to share!!!

I'm a freak, I know, but Mike gave me a pair of binoculars that we've had, and I've been staring at the birds for days.  I've been worried about the baby Sparrows, and with good reason.  Today before church, I saw one of the Martins in the Sparrow's nest tormenting the babies and it made one fly out!

So my heart is torn, as I'm sure God's is when his children can't or wont live together in harmony.  I want the Martins to live in the Birdie Hotel, but I don't want them to kick the Sparrows out.  Stay tuned...as of this afternoon, the Sparrows still have a home.

  (1Pe 3:8) "Finally, all of you, live in harmony with one another; be sympathetic, love as brothers, be compassionate and humble."

Majesty

I'm sitting under my carport as a scattered thunderstorm pops up.  I'm beginning to smell the wet asphalt and the cadence of the rain is getting more rapid.  The activity of the birds has slowed quite a bit as all of the nesting birds fly back to warm their exposed eggs.  I see a few stray birds here and there, probably the Daddy's watching over their brides.  The chirp of the Cardinal (my Jesus) is the loudest sound I hear right now.  His Majesty is everywhere!

Baby Oh Baby

So much has happened since baby robin was born a little over a month ago.  Life has flown at a shutter speed pace, with our 18 year old winding down her Senior year of high school...prom...CATS...graduation...oh, I'm getting sidetracked.  I'll talk about her later.  Back to this bird...God has shown me lots of lessons through this small life.

Lesson #1  Time passes so fast... It seems like just yesterday that my kids were babies.

Lesson #2  Along with this bird, there was another egg that never hatched.  As baby continued to grow, momma robin realized that her other baby would never be a baby, so she kicked it out of the nest to crack on the concrete.  What God showed me about this is that so many times we focus on what might have been that we miss out on what already is.  If momma would have continued to sit on the nest trying to hatch the other egg, she would begin to neglect the baby that already lived. 

Lesson #3  A momma's work is never done...nothing more to say about that!!

Lesson #4  Sometimes life scares the bejeebies out of us, but God still holds us in the palm of His Hands.  On day 12 of this new life, we had a bunch of people over to our house for Kinsey's graduation celebration.  As we were preparing, we scared the baby just one too many times and it literally jumped out of the nest and ran off into the bushes.  It wasn't quite ready to fly!  We never saw baby again...We kept checking the nest, watching for momma, and praying that she found him, but resting in the fact that God cares about all of His creation.  I honestly don't know what became of him.  I'm just hoping that he got to try out his wings!

Lesson #5  Life moves on...4 or 5 days have passed, and I was shocked to see momma robin come back to the nest and what does she do?  She lays 3 MORE EGGS!

Discipleship

I have a dear neighbor that lets me steal flowers from her.  She has a bunch of daisies, so I knew she wouldn't mind some of them making their way to my yard.  I've been realizing a little bit about transplanting flowers.  They need lots of water!!!  Each day, I would go outside and this daisy would be drooping again, as if to say, "I need more water so I can grow!"  So what do I do?  I water, and I water, and I water!

God's whisper to me in the daisies is this..."New believers need lots of watering!"  My heart couldn't help thinking about young children who accept Jesus as their Savior, believe that He is God's Son who died for their sins and rose to life again, and who also commit their lives to Him.  So many times, just like this daisy, I feel like they make that decision and are "planted", but then, we as parents and older disciples, leave them to droop because we don't "water" them!  New believers, just like new plants, need tons of attention to flourish!  We want our world to bloom with the love of Christ in His believers, so we have to take the time to invest in the future of the Kingdom...those young daisies!!

I'm a Grandmother!!

For two weeks, I have been watching a robin carefully, methodically build her nest, lay her eggs, and screech at anyone who disturbed her. She laid three eggs, but only two survived. We have had the most gorgeous past two weeks, up until this past weekend when we got the most rainfall in two days that I have ever witnessed. Tennessee got 25 percent of our yearly rainfall in two days. I have never seen such flooding. 22 have lost their lives so far, which absolutely breaks my heart.  In the midst of the downpours, I kept a close eye on my robin.  Rain poured down upon her all day for two days, but like devoted mothers do, she sat patiently on her nest all weekend long, knowing, like a mother's heart does, that her precious ones were soon to arrive.  Today is Monday, and after a long and frightening weekend, we awoke to the glorious glow of the sunshine.  When I checked on the nest, this is the sight that I found!!!  Life came out of the dark of the rainy, flood-filled weekend.  Hallelujah!  I feel like a grandmother!  (Gigi is what I want to be called)