Tag: robins

Is A Better Day Coming?

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For great is your love, reaching to the heavens; your faithfulness reaches to the skies. – Psalm 57:10 (NIV)

Today I looked out my kitchen window into the leafless plum tree in my front yard. It is March 1, and only tiny buds appear on that tree, for it is not yet the official season of spring. Much to my heart’s delight, a fat, little robin was perched on one of the upper branches. Just as I spotted the bird, it began to sing to me! (Okay, maybe it wasn’t actually singing to me, but allow me to entertain the thought.) The familiar song of the common robin brought a hugely comforting feeling to my heart: spring is near!

In the dead of winter it is hard to imagine that warmer and longer days will ever arrive. With the temperatures still cool and the brown of leafless branches yet the main color of the horizon, it is also difficult to picture the vibrant activity and color of summer. Yet, the little robin reminds us that the season is surely changing. With uncanny regularity, spring follows winter. The timeless, promise of Genesis 8:27 (NIV) stands true, “As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease.”

The robin’s cheerful song and orange breast on that brown branch reminded me of something else – God’s faithfulness. Flying right into the face of the cold and dormant nature of winter comes the color and activity of spring! In the same way that God is faithful to turn the seasons because of His promises, we know that He is faithful to turn our lives because of His promises. Flying right into the face of your dark and sad day will come the light and hope of a new life season. God promises to never give to us more than we can bear (I Corinthians 10:13). Even the man, Job, said, “But he knows the way I take; when he has tested me, I will come forth as gold” (Job 23:10, NIV).

That little songbird brought to the forefront Psalm 57:10 (NIV), “For great is your love, reaching to the heavens; your faithfulness reaches to the skies.” Surely, God’s steadfast nature reaches to the very skies of our world, delivering robins to Western Pennsylvania as a deposit on the promise of summer. God’s faithfulness reaches similarly to the skies of your life, setting forth the deposit on the promise of a season of healing and joy. Ecclesiastes 3:3-4 aptly proclaims, “[There is] a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to tear down and a time to build, a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance.”

God’s faithfulness reaches to both the skies and to the most remote and broken part of our human hearts. In fact, there is no place to which His faithfulness does not extend. That is why the Psalmist could say in 57:5 (NIV), “Be exalted, O God, above the heavens; let your glory be over all the earth.” As God is lifted up far past the expanse of this universe, so the hope He gives in His promises far surpasses all the difficulty we face. As He delivers the songbird at the start of spring, so He delivers hope to your heart even as your “winter” goes on. It won’t be long. He is reliable. He keeps His promise. So, let us be like the little robin in my leafless tree set against the gray sky, and let us sing – despite the current weather. For, we know spring is on the way. “I will praise you, O Lord, among the nations; I will sing of you among the peoples” (Psalm 57:9, NIV).

Is That Hole Really A Portal?

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When disappointed to see a hole six inches in diameter near the top of a thick, evergreen bush of ours; I assumed the obvious defect was the result of the severe winter’s huge icicles. I had knocked from my roof numerous icicles measured better in feet than inches. As soon as the beautiful spring weather made obvious the unnatural cavity near the top of our bush, I became annoyed at the disfigurement. “What needless damage,” I thought, as my mathematical mind longed for symmetry and completion.

Just a few days later, my husband – knowing how I love birds – excitedly asked me if I had seen the baby robins yet. “Where?” I asked. You can guess his answer . . . “In the bush under the kitchen window.” I rushed with my little nephews to see the oddly cute baby birds. How precious they were tucked away in the six-inch recess of our otherwise perfect bush. What a secure nest in which they rested, safely on the inner branches of the evergreen.

So, after all, the annoying hole in my bush is not just a hole, it is a portal . . . to new life. The dark cavity I thought a result of the random damage of winter months was a truly purposeful haven where life could begin.

And so it is with our God of creation. He shows us that holes can be portals. He shows us that seemingly bad or needless things can – in all reality – be entrances to life.

Romans 5:3-4 says, “Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope.” (NIV)

I can no more definitively explain how suffering results in hope than I can explain how robins construct sturdy nests with little beaks, or how God brings tiny birds out of eggs and makes them grow.

But I know this, for people redeemed by God through Jesus, behind every dark recess there is the victory of life. For the Christian, every abyss of suffering is truly a portal to perseverance, character, and – ultimately – hope. I have known no suffering not accompanied by the need to persevere; I have known no trial that could not result in increased character, and I have known no heartache that the hope of Jesus could not soothe.

Our suffering is not an inconvenient hole in the otherwise orderliness of life; it is a portal to hope when viewed through the perspective of God.

And, even now as I write this devotion, the baby robins chirp, “Amen!”