When I look at the world on a particular day, say
today. Today it is hotter than it should be, hazy
Lazy with the slow afternoon of a Sunday nap, trapped
inside our city, and this country by forces beyond our control.
Control is a thing governments (and small children) crave, slaves
though it makes of us all.
On the phone, far from home, I hear of a woman whose name I don’t
know, who says she is afraid of God. Hawkish, harsh
like someone bent over your shoulder, watching for what you’ll do wrong.
Wrong, like I was all week, standing too close, correcting a kid whose
performance was lacking. “Slacking!” I said, with my hawk-like eyes.
I think of this woman, my kid, and the world, on this particular day.
Pray, tell me why we believe God to be so harsh and exacting? Exactly
like us, we think?
I too watch birds, mostly sparrows. Rows of wrens lining the rail, pale
pigeons, broad-chested, long-necked, deep-throated calls.
Calling to one another, they are free of care. Care
to share your secret? Yet this is how God says he cares for us:
look to the sparrows, not the hawk.
Some days I pick up a particular piece of the world, lamenting Annie-Dillard-like
over the vicious incongruity, the unfairness, the blighted mess of it all.
All truth be told, it is not the whole of things. Sing,
says the bird, full-throated and loud, other stories of the world!
Unfurled, into His own creation in revolt, revolting
some people found Him,
The unwelcome God, making a way
for us to come home.
Wow. This is incredible and exactly what I needed to read as I mull over what to say to my own slacker child before we plunge into a new week.