Bird in the Hand

I like animals well enough – in their place.

I don't particularly care for animals in people places.

Flies, bugs, spiders, rodents of any sort (what was I thinking in grade 5 when I had gerbils?), fish on the floor instead of the tank, birds. I like birds when they're flying around in the sky or sitting in a tree singing happily. I don't like birds when they swoop. I'm always afraid they will swoop into my head – and it's not like they haven't tried: that territorial crow that dive-bombed my head when I was going for a walk by the lake, those barn swallows that think they own the building where they want to build their nests, that large brown bird that somehow got into my bedroom this summer.

So I was a little disconcerted this week when I came to set up for a party in a local seniors' drop-in center and the lady in charge told me I was in for some excitement – a bird had flown in an open door when they were hauling things to their car. I was very grateful that she seemed to be taking charge of the situation by hunting for it and moving things around to get it out from the corners it was cowering in. I'm not a great help when it comes to trying to get swooping birds out of places – I'm too busy cowering myself – but I did what I could: I went to get my 8-year-old son to see if he would be willing to try to catch the bird in a corner and carry it outside.

He dutifully came and did his best, but though he was braver than I, he was still a little hesitant about touching a live bird and hesitation tends to diminish one's success in catching a bird. The lady kept chasing the bird with a broom from one end of the room to another, but the bird was scared and wouldn't fly out the open doors. This went on for a few minutes and then the lady had enough.

“Well, I guess we'll just have to kill this bird to get it out,” she said as she proceeded to squash it with the broom. She didn't have time for any other options and she was sweeping the half-dead bird towards the door before I could do or say anything about the grisly scene. When it stuck against the door jamb, she picked it up and threw it outside. “Well, that's one less sparrow,” she commented. And immediately, that children's song popped into my head:

                      God sees the little sparrow fall,

                      It meets his tender view.

                      If God so loves the little things,

                     I know he loves me, too.

And yet, the sparrow still falls. And tragic things still happen to individuals and families; whole communities still struggle under the burden of deplorable social conditions or natural disaster; societies collapse or spiral into corruption. In my humanness, it seems that safety and security and life free from pain and sorrow would be a pretty sweet expression of love. But God's love transcends our puny human imaginings and blazes through all those things we would prefer to avoid. In that confusing place where a fallen world and freedom of choice meet the love of God, God can use those things to enlarge our souls and make our hearts hungry for the God who is all the security we really have or need.

Are not two sparrows sold for a penny?

Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from the will of your Father.

...So don't be afraid;

you are worth more than many sparrows.

Matthew 10:29, 31

Now to Him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine,

according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church

and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever. Amen.

Ephesians 3:20

Eyesight

I took my son to the ophthalmologist this week for the last time.

My son has had prescription glasses for almost four years, but I could probably count on my hands the number of days he's actually worn them. Since he first got them, he has claimed that they don't make a difference. A couple years ago, his eye doctor became concerned that his eyesight was deteriorating for no apparent reason and referred him to a specialist.

The first time we went to the ophthalmologist, he confirmed what my son had been saying all along – his glasses did not, indeed, make a significant difference to his eyesight. In fact, he has probably had fairly poor vision his entire life and it is unlikely to improve. He has never seen clearly and so he sees as well as can be expected. For whatever reason, corrective lenses don't improve his vision appreciably.

On this final check-up, as usual, my son was instructed to read the eye chart on the wall, the larger letters on the top, and then decreasing in size. First he read as far as he could without his glasses and then he tried with his glasses on. I sat there, watching my son, a voracious reader, read the first and second line correctly, and by the third row, struggling to make out the letters, sometimes mistaking one for another, regardless of whether he was wearing glasses or not. He could say with conviction that the G was a D, but that did not make it so. He could believe that a K was a Z, but reality was unaffected. What he saw was different than what was really there.

I have to wonder if this isn't a picture of how life on this earth is. I see bad things happen to people to whom I believe they shouldn't, and I see the letters B-A-D or

W-R-O-N-G or U-N-F-A-I-R. That is all I can make out on the eye chart and it makes me angry or anxious or afraid. That is what I see and that is what I can choose to believe. It is in those times that I have to instead choose to trust that God's vision is clearer than mine, that God can read farther down the chart than I can, that to God, the events of life aren't just a mad jumble of random letters, but that they spell something more, something meaningful, perhaps in a language I do not yet know.

For now we see through a glass, darkly;

but then we shall see face to face:

now I know in part;

but then I shall know even as also I am known.

1 Corinthians 13:12

Now faith is being sure of what we hope for

and certain of what we do not see.

Hebrews 11:1

Inheritance

I collect stories of people the way some people collect stamps or hockey cards. All my life I have done this. But there is one story that has captured my imagination more than any other. It is the story of my paternal grandmother. I never knew her; my father never knew her; my aunt and uncle cannot remember her; there is virtually no one left on earth who has any memory of her. Perhaps this is why her story has so captivated me my whole life – the intrigue, the mystery, the urgency to ferret out any details that can be found that tell me of a history that has shaped me despite my knowing so little.

Her name was Sara.

My grandmother died after giving birth to my dad. His siblings were just toddlers at the time and they grew up in a home where her story was not a topic of conversation. For me, however, finding her story has become a bit of a passion and a pet project. In a certain sense, it feels like not knowing her story has somehow denied me of my inheritance. And so, I am doing what I can to scrape together any details of her life I can find, mining relatives minds for any scraps of memory they have of my grandmother or even things people said about her, having knowledgeable people dig through archives, reading historical documents and comparing them to genealogical records an uncle gave me.

It is difficult to describe the anticipation I feel on the brink of a new discovery – looking over the shoulder of the archivist as he scrolls through a microfiche of an old newspaper, reading the one tiny little book recounting the development and disbandment of the settlement where my grandmother grew up and where her father was shot and killed – and the gratitude and elation at finding a new detail. And yet, there is still a sense of dissatisfaction because I still don't know who she was or what she was like. I know facts of her life, but I don't know her.

This week on my way to the archives in Winnipeg, I was wondering about this. I had fully five other grandparents whose stories I haven't investigated with this kind of determination. Why is that? I think perhaps it is because they were part of my story. I knew them all, had experiences with them, talked to them. Our stories were interconnected. I still know people who know their history. It feels like I still have time to find out about them. I took their presence in my life for granted.

And then I was thinking about God's story. Am I investigating that with any passion? Do I feel that same sense of anticipation of finding something new when I read God's story? That sense of urgency to find out about God, that desire to know God personally? What benefits and blessings am I robbing myself of when I limit my relationship with God to the metaphorical hug and kiss I gave my grandparents on our way out the door after having spent the afternoon in their basement or watching their TV? It is too late to know any of my grandparents at any deeper level, to pursue a more intimate relationship with them. But it's not too late with God. And the stakes are higher. Will I do something about that?

I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened

in order that you may know the hope to which [God] has called you,

the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints,

and his incomparably great power for us who believe.

Ephesians 1:18