As spring arrives each year, I always reflect on this picture of a robin’s nest I took a few years ago. The nest was in a small tree on the side of our deck. From the deck, I got a wonderful view of the nest. I love that the robins had found some blue string to weave into the nest. Quite an eye for color coordination. That was the only time a nest was built into that tree. Each year since, robins have built nests under the deck in the eves. And they are always very messy with string and grass falling all over. Same kind of birds, different approach to new life.
This reminds me of the lines from Mary Oliver’s poem, Song of Builders: “ Let us hope it will always be like this, each of us going on in our inexplicable ways building the universe.”
The challenge of the scriptures today is to cultivate new life as Paul and Barnabas did. The challenge is to recognize the new God is doing in our lives as Revelation sites. God will cherish us as a people to love amidst all the change that at times is so frightening. We too have been “commended to the grace of God.”
Some of us are called to be like Paul and Barnabas full of energy for the mission. Some of us are called to see and explain the new Jerusalem. Yet, all of us are to love one another as Jesus has loved us. Not so easy. We have to love those who create neat color coordinated nests and those who are messy and their ways not always to our liking. To love so freely is the grace we pray for this day. To be graced with open hearts is the gift we need as we and those we need to love “go on in our inexplicable ways building the universe.”
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