The Divine Gift of Wonder

This morning, I discovered a Robin’s nest tucked on top of a drain pipe under an eave of the front of my home. The tangle of twigs and dirt took my breath away.

As I stood on tip-toes to get a closer look, , a cool, gentle breeze blew over me, stirring many memories. They rolled across the canvas of my mind like mini reels on a social media stream of my life.

I was struck by the extraordinary ways God meets us in the ordinary, whispering through the wonder of creation.

The heavens declare the glory of God: the skies proclaim the works of his hands.

This truth resonated in my spirit the moment I spotted the nest. The fact I discovered the nest in exactly the same season that a family of robins visited me many years ago was not lost on this watcher. I know that with God there are no coincidences or accidents. It is in the perfectly timed incidences that God's presence is experienced.

When events align in meaningful ways, believers learn to recognize the signs of God's hand moving behind the scenes. Psalm 19 tells us,

God gets our attention in synchronicity because the orchestration of Divinity defies our limited understanding of space, time, and gravity.

My Second Gift Bearing Nest

The tangle of twigs, grass, and dirt at my front door came as the second nest to take up residence at my home. The first appeared 17 years ago on Mother's Day, a week after my birthday. I had just returned from a prayer walk, pouring out my mid-life laments as a single parent, asking God for the strength I needed to meet my responsibilities.

Like so many sisters of my generation, I was holding it down, working 50 and 60 hour weeks, not only to fullfill my job duties but also constantly under the implicit and explicit pressure to prove myself even as a seasoned professional. During this period, my eyes were opened to the unique racial dynamics, and dangers, that come with working on social justice issues along side self-described white progressives. I learned white progressive spaces can present some of the most painful challenges for Black people.

Disobeying an office edict forbidding staff to take college classes or engage in civic activities to accommodate increasing workloads, I entered seminary. My reverential fear of the Lord exceeded any intimidation I may have felt in the work place.

At the same time, I was managing the health and school challenges with my youngest child at home, who had been diagnosed with a chronic illness at the age of four. My adult child, who was striving to make a life for her own family, still needed certain supports.

Prayer walking, talking to God while in motion, had become a lifline in my soul and health care practice. On that particular Mother's Day years ago, Mother bird showed up precisely as I entered the kitchen from my prayer walk. She flew to the ledge and placed a paper towel, of all things, on it.

When the Student is Ready, the Teacher Appears

I did not know exactly why, but I knew Mother bird arrived as an answer, and for a reason. I immediately embraced her symbolism. In many cultures, robins represent assurance and comfort. They also represent hope, renewal and restoration. So, with a renewed sense of wonder, I watched her build her cradle of love from scratch. With a single-minded focus, she worked in determined silence and purpose.

Like an architect guided by an invisible blueprint, she carefully selected her building materials and wove them together in a labor of love and devotion. Every move reflected a deep, almost sacred, sense of knowing and trust. I watched in awe.

This went on for a few days, until the nest was constructed. And then she disappeared. When she returned, she was accompanied by the father-to-be. And he was the epitome of the protector. He stood like a sentiniel on a fence across from the nest. If I pressed my face against the window pane for a closer view of her sitting in the nest, he flew at the window in a fit, flapping his wings shooing me away.

We witnessed the hatching process, and then the parents working in unison frantically fetching worms and dropping them in the hungry chicks' open mouths. The parents stayed with the chicks until they grew, and each learned to fly. There was a slow poke that kept them in the nest after the other chicks flew away.

But one day, I came home from work, and they were all gone. Mission accomplished. I mourned their absence, which my mother, who journeyed with me as I got to know my feathered neighbors, teased me about. Robins are great parents. They understand their duties, and assignments. I took to heart their message of encouragement, and reassurance, and lessons on focus, faith, and trust in the Divine order.

Footsteps of Faith Found in Nature

The recent nest reconnected me to the memory and lessons of my Robin story. It also came as an affirmation in this season of renewal to pay attention; and to keep my eyes and heart open to wonder in my senior years. Childhood is often the place where the sacred connection with God begins but it is not where it ends.

My spiritual journey began in the cradle. Although I had no understanding of theology, sermons, and Bible verses, and certainly no language, I came to know God’s presence in the quiet corners of silence and the wonder of being.

A poignant phase of my early spiritual formation took place in a rural all-white community that my family moved to when I was six. The nearest neighbor was more than a mile away.

Our home was next to a meadow at the bottom of a gentle sloping hill. I spent long afternoons playing in the sun-drenched fields bursting with wildflowers, and grasshoppers that leapt at my feet.

I sat for hours watching spiders spin their webs in the corners of house, each thread catching the light. Turtles, frogs, you name them. The earth was alive with the most amazing creatures. My sisters and brothers and I chased fireflies at night as my parents sat whispering, watching us and the stars in the black sky.

Looking back, I realize God was meeting me, teaching me, and guiding me in the intimacy of those moments of holy communion. I knew I was not alone. Creation was not just beautiful. It was sacred. And it was everywhere. The hum of a bee hovering over clover, crickets chirping, tadpoles dancing in a pond, all spoke a language I could understand before I had words for wonder.

Whether 5 or 50, 1 or 100, God invites us to the altar of the sacred embedded in the natural world, to listen, to watch, and to receive the gifts before us. Wonder opens the human heart to sacred nearness of God. The psalmists often sing of God’s presence in nature.

In Romans 1, Paul writes that God’s invisible qualities such as eternal power and divinity can be see in what has been created. Put another way, the Creator created all creation; and continues to speak to us through the simplest things, like Robin nest nestled at my door.

Reflection

Have you known God this way? In a breeze through the trees, in the quiet of awe of sunrise and sunset? The same God who spoke the universe into stillness is still speaking today. It is often in the simple things, like a bird’s nest, and in the still moments of Creation.

Prayer

Lord, thank You for revealing yourself through your creation. Open my eyes anew to your wonder. Help me to remember that You are always near, not only building and places, but in meadows, fields, and sunlight and shadow. Teach me to listen more closely for you in wonder and the awe of your creation. Amen.