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Thursday, April 16, 2015

Someday my finch will come

In my experience, the best way to find something is to look for something else entirely (your car keys).  This applies to bird watching as well.  The spring migration has begun and we northerners (at least those of us crazy enough to know what a limpkin is) eagerly scan the ponds and bushes, hoping for the chance of seeing something we have never seen before, a new species to add to our much feted 'life list.'  There are various birds lumped into the category of 'northern finches,' and as we moved about as far north as one can and still be in the lower 48 states nearly eight years ago, I was eager to add a few of these unique creatures to my list.  In seven years and countless attempts, I never saw any of these coveted birds.  Then we moved 500 miles west and south and all my hopes of seeing those particular birds sputtered out, though I found myself in an area with a plethora of new and interesting birds to discover, I was a little disappointed, but life goes on and cannot revolve around one's obsessions.

Yesterday, out of the blue, one of those 'northern finches' wandered into my life.  A whole flock of red crossbills had invaded the neighbor's yard and I was within four feet of three of them busy at the bird feeder.  Life is kind of like that: when we least expect it, we trip right over something that changes our lives forever.  When we look to the future and try to plot and plan and hope, often there comes no clear answer, but then we lay aside thoughts of our 'destiny' and then run headlong into something amazing when we weren't looking for it.  If you need proof that there is a God or that He has a sense of humor, just look back at your own life or listen to the tales of others.  His timing and provision are perfect, it is our impatience and demand for immediate satisfaction or perhaps our longing for something we cannot have or that will not be good for us that drives us to think that He is absent or uncaring or non-existent. He answers prayers, but often the answer is 'no' or 'wait.'

I still don't like waiting, I want to open my christmas presents now (yes, it is April), which would utterly ruin a year's worth of planning and anticipation on the part of my family and friends, rather I must quietly abide in dire curiosity and pray that I not burst with the effort.  Rather than focusing all our attention and hope on something: a vacation, a future career or love interest, college, owning a certain house or car, getting rich…perhaps we should focus on Someone and we'll trip over the relatively minor details whilst our attention is focused elsewhere.  This is not to say one should not plan and prepare for certain things, but all our Joy should not be found in the fulfillment thereof.  The thing desired cannot become an idol to draw our attention away from the One who provides everything, else all is vain, for no 'thing' can ever fill the gap in our souls that is the source of all such longings.

Again and again, I have fallen into the trap of 'life will be awesome when…' even though I know better.  He has faithfully provided again and again, but yet I still fail to trust Him or look to Him for the easing of that eternal ache that can never be truly healed in this broken world.  But rather, when I do focus on Him, the wait is not nearly so bad, and suddenly the thing desired is before me long before I thought to look for it, or so it seems, for when I am waiting for 'something,' the days are long and the hours cruel, but when my attention is fixed on the Source of all good things, when my hope is set on things 'not of this world,' time is swift indeed.  The wait can be a blessing or an agony, why must I always choose the self-torture and the pain?  If I can trust Him to provide the sparrows, can I not trust Him with the far more important aspects of life?

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