Though there would seem little hope that I'll discover something new and exciting pushing through the bone-dry ground on my daily walks around Pollywog Creek, I haven't stopped looking.
I've learned to expect surprises and lessons from nature in my walking times in conversation with God. He never ceases to amaze me with treasures big and small. It might be in the glorious display of sunlight as it streaks through the pine trees or in a tiny insect that I could not see without my camera as it savors the sweet nectar of a common wildflower.
Yesterday I was sad to discover that the loggerhead shrike family was no longer living in one of the tall pine trees in our pasture, but as I continued to walk across the clearing, I thought I heard them in a neighbor's overgrown pasture across the road.
The baby birds chirped continuously, but all I could see of them was the rustling of the leaves on a small scrub oak near the fence line. It would take me a while to get to them, but I left our pasture in hopes of getting a closer look.
The baby birds were startled by my approach, and all four of them scattered out of the scrub oak and onto the limbs of a small pine tree nearby. Sensing danger, they immediately began calling for help.
I had seen the adult shrikes flying about and knew they were nearby, but unlike their previous attempts to scare me away, they ignored the cries of their little ones and let me get as close as the fence allowed. For these babies to have flown from the top of the tall pine tree in our pasture to where they were, I knew that the time for leaving the safety and security of the nest was probably very near.
Like all good parents, these shrikes were likely giving their babies the opportunity to fend for themselves in the way baby shrikes need to if they are going to mature and thrive in the future.
These are the last of the shrike photos - for a while anyway. I promise. It's just that babies are so darn cute - except maybe rattlesnake babies - and the lesson here was just too good to pass up. I, too, have a baby perched out on the very edge of a limb - spreading her wings to fly.
This quote from
yesterday's My Utmost for His Highest by Oswald Chambers pierced my heart when I read it and has resonated with me since...
"To be certain of God means that we are uncertain in all our ways, not knowing what tomorrow may bring. This is generally expressed with a sigh of sadness, but it should be an expression of breathless expectation."
Emily was offered the congressional internship in DC for the fall. First she flies to Rwanda, then DC. And then? So many uncertainties that in the natural I'd foolishly and vainly want to make certain for my "baby bird" and me, but trusting instead in the certainty of God, I can look not only at today, but at all the days ahead, with "breathless expectation."
