"The birds of the air have nests"

This morning Sarah and I sat out in our side yard to read the daily office. Nearby is our propane tank which fuels our gas range. There is a lid that covers the dial, and under the lid a Carolina wren built a cozy nest where she is raising her wee family of two nestlings.

Nearby, our cockatiel Mikki can see her from the morning room window. He is her D.E.W. (Distant Early Warning) system. When he perceives trouble, he screams, "HAWK!" (hawk being Mikki's generalized or specific cry of trouble abroad) and Mother Wren knows to wait quietly for the "all clear" so that she does not betray her presence with any movement.

It's amazing that she has nested in a place that is both secure and dangerous. She's sitting on a world of danger should the gas leak, or somehow something should cause the tank to explode. She's also in the safest nesting place in the neighborhood because of the sturdy lid, and her friend, Mikki.

A little over a month ago, my husband was downsized from his job. No cockatiel warned him that it was coming. One day he went into work, and at three o'clock in the afternoon he was unemployed. They could not afford him any more. It has been an amazing month in so many ways. As he has trusted the Lord to provide, so our heavenly Father has done just that. There is no job on the horizon that we can see (although we hope for what we do not see), and because we have the ability to reason, in some ways we are worse off than the wren. We are sitting on top of a propane tank, but under the protection of our Lord Jesus who cares for us even more than He does for the wren.

This is a learning, and stretching time.

Susan Price