Beauty surrounds us, but we usually need to be walking in a garden to know it - Rumi
It’s January again! All the excitement, fun and fervour of Christmas is over. For our American cousins Thanksgiving Day must be a distant memory. There seems nothing to look forward to now; the summer holidays are a long way off, if we can afford one. Now the credit card bills that funded Christmas are dropping through the letterbox demanding payment. So far as the weather is concerned rain turning to snow is forecast, with gales and icy road conditions. Flooding is likely in some areas so that villages on the east coast of England are set to be evacuated. The garden is bare and brown. All seems doom and gloom.
Despite all that, on looking out of the kitchen window this morning we saw a thrush in the garden. Now the thrush is not an uncommon garden bird but we have not seen one here recently. There is a family of blackbirds who regularly make a nest in the bushes and the tiny wren can be seen in amongst the leaf litter, whilst the robin will allow me to use “his” garden, but the thrush is a less common visitor. Yet there he was eating up the bugs and worms he needs to get him through the cold days to come – he would really like a few juicy snails but they seem to be in hiding. What a joy to see him though! What, you may ask, has a common garden bird to do with unpaid credit card bills or anything else really? The answer is that the divide between our secular life and our spiritual one is artificial. God reveals Himself to us in the ordinary everyday things of life: the birds, the trees, the plants, in everything we see or touch - if only we are willing to open our eyes to see! He is not remote, only to be found in some “holy place”. More than that, not only does He show Himself this morning in the thrush, but He provides the food that bird needs. Then Jesus’ words as recorded in St Matthew’s Gospel come to mind: 25 ‘Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? 26 Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? 27 Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life? Matthew 6:24-27(NIV). If God is willing to provide food for one member of His Creation, surely He will care for us too. ‘Do not worry’ Jesus said. The icy storms will pass away, the people evacuated will return to their homes, the garden will bloom again and the credit card bills will be paid. Thanks be to God.
2 Comments
Steve Givens
17/1/2017 10:47:08 pm
Same over here across the pond...gloom, rain and forecasts of snow. Haven't seen the sun for days. Reminds of living in England! But you're right...life continues. Plenty of birds here, and lots of migratory ones on their way south. A reminder that God is at work in the details and the ordinary.
Reply
Your comment will be posted after it is approved.
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorI am an Authorised Local Preacher in an Anglo Catholic parish church, in the Diocese of Essex UK Archives
February 2022
|