Recently each morning as I read my Bible there is an aerial show right outside my window. It is quite spectacular and draws my attention everyday. Around 20 or more Violet-green swallows give me a graceful, aerial, acrobatic fly-by. It is such a fast fly-by that no camera can catch them for a picture! They zip out of view as soon as they enter it! Diving and floating in figure eight patterns enables them to snatch up insects. Zipping and zinging through the sky at 28 miles per hour - my eyes can’t keep up with them! Even to catch 2 in the picture above I count amazing. But then watching them last spring and following their landings, we caught one building a nest in the old birdhouse attached to the kids’ playhouse. I count this photo as a privilege from my feather friend as he posed. What striking metallic and iridescent colors shined from the sunlight! These birds are just lovely, one of God’s magnificent creations.
I have been reflecting on why I am so struck by these little creations. Soaring above the garden with no thoughts of man’s concerns, these birds just obey the Master’s design for them. My heart is heavy as I absorb the events happening in our country and the seemingly unending griefs. There are no answers from my wisdom. I have no answer. God’s answer is that mankind turns to Jesus Christ. God’s perspective is surely way above ours, His thoughts the opposite of ours. My soaring comes when I take God’s perspective as my own. Isaiah 40:28 reminds us, “Have you not known? Have you not heard? The everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth, neither faints nor is weary. His understanding is unsearchable.” I must continue to learn to “seek those things which are above, where Christ is, sitting at the right hand of God and set my mind on things above, not on things on the earth.” Colossians 3:1-2. When you and I obey this, things on earth change. Anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy language, etc. is put off. Instead we put . , on tender mercies, kindness, humility, meekness, long suffering, bearing with one another, forgiving one another, etc. When God enables, by His Spirit, this exchange, we give thanks and give praise to our Heavenly Father. Isaiah 48:17-18, “Thus says the Lord, your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel: I am the Lord your God, who teaches you to profit, who leads you by the way you should go. Oh, that you had heeded My commandments! Then your peace would have been like a river, and your righteousness like the waves of the sea.” Then we soar, like the Violet-green swallows, above the earth. Simplistic? It is God’s design for us, for all mankind.
K.C.
