Column: Information Station

September 2008

Shingled and with a front porch, it was our first bird house in fifty years of marriage. I wasn’t sure it was theologically correct to pray for roomers, but I took a chance “Please let birds build a nest in this house. And let them have babies.”

One bright morning in June, my husband John whispered the news I’d been waiting for. “I saw a swallow go in!” Soon we confirmed that there  were  a pair.

They  became a familiar sight flying in and out of their rental  with bits of dried grass in their beaks. John and I exchanged honeyed glances  After fifty years, we have our own bird family.

After the nest was built, we’d see one of the swallows perched  on the phone line while the other was inside If anyone moved toward their house, the lookout swooped and dived menacingly.

 We watched from a distance, agreeing that the mama bird must have laid eggs.  Late June as I walked past the birdhouse,  I heard the sound I’d prayed for “Cheep Cheep Cheep.”

“They’re born!” I burst out when my husband returned home “The babies are cheeping.”  We almost danced around the kitchen for joy.

The same month, our landlord told us he was going to paint the garage. But what about our bird family? “I’ll wait to paint the back where the bird house is until the babies fly away,” our landlord  assured us.

But a few days later when he began scraping and sanding the front, John and I shook our heads Wouldn’t the birds be terrified?  How could they survive such noise and vibration?

As though the back yard had suddenly become a war zone, that day and the next we watched the swallows dart and swoop with every ounce of bird strength they had.

 Sunday, on our way to church, John shook his head, as though reading signs of a storm “No swallow on the wire.”

 With hope running into my shoes, later that day I listened at the birdhouse, then turned to John “Not a single peep.”

We looked inside. In the nest, we found four dead babies sitting upright. Overwhelmed with anger and grief, John threw the birdhouse and babies in the garbage can. Later, he retrieved the little ones from the garbage and buried them in a flower bed.

When they sat alone and hungry in their nest, those baby birds had no way to understand what had happened. In a way, neither did I when, as a child, my father was removed from our home to  live the rest of his life in a mental hospital. All I knew was that he went away and never came back.

We can’t expect dumb creatures like those baby birds to understand  why the God  who created them would possibly allow them to suffer. Human beings, however, do have that capacity. That’s why God explained it in the Book inspired.  

He did more than just provide an explanation and then walk away. He actually took every one of the sins that separate us on Himself and paid the price—death. So we can live forever free.

Archives:
August 2008
July 2008
June 2008
May 2008
April 2008
March 2008
February 2008
January 2008
December 2007
November 2007
October 2007
September 2007