It’s the season of finding nests, and so far, I’ve marveled over three Robin nests and two Sparrow nests. I’ve learned over the years to keep a nice distance and snap a photo when the mother bird leaves for breakfast, and I often return a week or two later to see the newly hatched chicks. It brings such delight!
On my neighborhood loop this morning, I peer into the old pine tree that normally houses some kind of nest—whether the Mourning dove or the Robin or the Northern Cardinal. But this time, I only see old nests. One looks like the wind upended it; one looks turned on its side; one looks completely disheveled. They look ransacked, plundered, and destroyed!
No new nests here. I tell my friend we can walk on.
But she’s taller and wiser. She doesn’t move on and simply says, “You’re missing it. You’re completely missing it!”
At her height, she’s gazing right into a freshly built Robin’s nest. She films a video so I can see it.
Stunned, I realized how captured my mind felt with those decaying, scattered nests of the past season. Had I looked up with a new vantage point (with the help of a wise friend), I would have seen the truth of new growth, new life, new delights.
We walk on, and I think of Isaiah’s words in chapter 43 where he tells us what the Lord says: “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?”
Do you not perceive it?
I think about how the same lovely pine, like our lives, contains both the past and the present, but we can always discover new and beautiful things God is doing. Maybe the Robin couple used the old nests to build their new home, taking those fragments and threads to make a new generation of joy. Maybe that’s always how it is: you build alongside what has been ransacked or plundered in your own life. You press on into a new season, and take what you’ve learned to line your nest.
I remember to watch for the Lord’s new growth and the new things He is doing. I remember to take friends along on the journey who know how to see things I cannot see.