Nests and Wings

For decades I’ve been a fan (and collector) of abandoned but artistic/symbolic bird nests. Off and on, nests of various sizes and shapes have perched here and there in my house as icons of protection/shelter and new life.

I’ve also used the word “nesting” as a way of expressing my own instinctive longings to resourcefully build a home with whatever components might be available. “I’m just nesting,” I’ve explained while rearranging plants, books, pictures or old memorabilia. While I don’t promote clutter for its own sake, I also don’t like the idea of living in a sterile or boring environment.

But nests are, after all, impermanent, temporary things; my own nest-focus can keep me within my own self-limited nest-framework when I’m tempted to become set in my ways, opinionated, self-contained. I talk about an eternal perspective of life while embracing the temporal; I say love conquers all, and yet forget to expect it to miraculously redefine my nest.

In an old (1939) book entitled, “Springs in the Valley,” the author says: “God, like the eagle, stirs our nest. Yesterday it was the place for us; today there is a new plan. He wrecks the nest, although He knows it is dear to us; perhaps because it IS dear to us…”

Yesterday a friend emailed me online pictures of 21-year-old Katie Kirkpatrick who was attending a Christian college in Michigan. I saw a beautiful but emaciated blonde riddled with cancer on the day she was wed to Nick Godwin. She died 5 days later, and her spirit went Home. This is a story of Greater Love that survived to testify beyond Katie’s eaten-alive body and her broken-and-blown-apart nest-of-dreams.

http://bop.nppa.org/2006/still_photography/winners/OES/67966/134497.html

Some time ago (years ago) in a National Geographic story, a ranger in California was surveying the aftermath of a forest fire and came upon a charred, statuesque bird corpse. The account says, “…he struck it, (and) three tiny chicks scurried from under their dead mother's wings. The loving mother, keenly aware of impending disaster, had carried her offspring to the base of the tree and had gathered them under her wings, instinctively knowing that the toxic smoke would rise. She could have flown to safety but had refused to abandon her babies.”

I’ve been told I’m a survivor. However, a true survivor may need to evacuate a nest (not only a dwelling but a habitual lifestyle, ideology, or dream) for one reason or another. Where to go? Security is a matter of being positioned beneath God’s wings, whatever the circumstances and wherever else I happen to be – take Katie Kirkpatrick for example, or those baby birds in the forest fire.

“He will cover you with his feathers, and under his wings you will find refuge.” (Psalm 91:4)”