Using the Scraps

This isn’t the time of year when birds are making nests, but it is the season, leaves long gone now, when the nests used in the previous months can be more clearly seen tucked in the branches that held them securely through the warm spring and summer. 

In the seasons past, each bird was building something for the future.  Each chose a secure place in which to build a nest that would hold her eggs.  But consider what each used to build that nest.  Birds gather a whole lot of things that do not hold life in themselves anymore to make those nests.  They use broken pieces of twigs and sticks, cut grass and clippings, dead leaves, yarn, string or thread, human hair or animal fur, feathers.

This week I noticed two nests in a tree just outside our living room windows.  Even in the now stark days, snow falling, wind blowing, they sit securely.  They succeeded in their purpose of being a good place for the laying of eggs and the nurturing of young life of the baby birds who were gaining strength to set out on their own.

I have been impressed for weeks now about the reality of restoration that is available to us.  God is mightily at work to build strong and beautiful things out of our broken lives and use us for holy purposes in the realities of a messy world.  Those nests showed me something else.  They reminded me that I can take the dead things of my life and gather them with the mud of His grace and care and promises, and instead of trying to discard the messy stuff, let it be used, now redeemed, for the birthing of new things. 

Our painful experiences hold the very ingredients that can enable us to be compassionate with those who are suffering, and are the grace-nests or sorts…evidence that whatever our past, even our current struggles, we have a very good reason to hope. In these weeks of Advent, of waiting for the coming and all that that meant and means still, let our hearts burn brightly with the hope that is embedded in His story.  He came, He isn’t afraid of the realities, He is brilliant and picks up every available piece and winds it together to become useful for His purposes.  He has peace and joy for us, and we don’t have to chuck the mess of our own stories to have them.  Some of the brightest things forward will be birthed from the scraps we make available to His work.

Photograph from morguefile.com by TwoCherryFarm