Freedom and Danger Hold Hands
A full life will be tinted with danger.
Every single spring, I plant things in the ground than run outside the very next day, looking for any signs that something might be growing. Every spring, I put up hummingbird feeders and then internally stomp my foot in frustration each day the birds don’t materialize. I know this is illogical. I know these things take time and that patience is required, but I do it anyway.
It is one of my idiosyncrasies. This year, it's more intense with this enforced state of in-between. Our house is still not quite ready to move into, and I still find myself plagued with symptom riots. When I do not feel well or stuck or both, I look for thriving somewhere else as a distraction from my own frustrations and pains...and to find a piece of goodness to think about.
So, yesterday, I went to check on a nest of newly hatched birds to see how they had changed since the last time I saw them. I found them all dead on the ground below. And I was reminded, once more, that freedom holds hands with danger. In this fallen world, there is no other way around that fact. To live free is to face death. And often, death comes for the most innocent.
The wild and free world is so beautiful and so terrifying. It's a never-ending undulation of life and death, prey and predator, pain and ease, bird song and death cries. It doesn't care how much you want to live or how much you want to accomplish. Because for something to live, something else always has to die. It's nothing personal, it's just a matter of survival. Like the tick that bit me long ago and has left me a bit of wreck of what I could have been otherwise. I'm not dead yet, and maybe I won't die of the damage from Lyme, but it has left it's mark.
And yet, I love my freedom. And I refuse to stay away from grassy fields and cool woods even though ticks inhabit them. I will live and die on my own terms, not covered in layers of clothing and frightened of a disease trying to survive at my expense.
"Nature is cruel. But we don't have to be."
Memorable words from Temple Grandin. Words I'll never forget. We humans are made in the image of God. And that is why we should put cruelty to death inside of us whenever we find it. Because God is not like the natural world. He made it perfect and beautiful in the beginning. It's cruel now because we sinned and ruined it. Someday it will be perfect again.
To forsake cruelty is to live in expectation of that day. It is to remember that God in all His glory and power doesn't think it a waste of His time to see and take notice when the most insignificant bird dies and falls to the ground.
After my sad discovery, I went looking for lily blooms. The previous owner planted a lot of them, and I have been impatiently waiting for signs of color. I found them. And I found something else that surprised and delighted hiding in the leaves.
I do not quite understand how the world can be so ugly and so beautiful all at once. My only answer is God's grace.
That’s all for now. Until next time, folks…