For Wilshire Baptist Church
There’s been a flurry of activity on our front porch in recent days. We have seven ferns in hanging baskets and the birds have been all over them. We’ve seen doves and finches fighting over baskets with loud shrieks and flapping wings, but the calm center of attention has been a pair of robins who built a nest in the basket closest to our front door.
One evening while LeAnn was on a Zoom call, I looked out the window and noticed the basket was vacant, so I grabbed my phone and selfie stick and took a quick peek. I hit the video button and raised the phone up over the nest and held it there for a moment, unable to see what I was getting. But when I brought it back down and touched the play button, I almost lost my breath when I saw four perfect, light blue eggs. Two days later, while the parents were away, I peeked again and recorded four little hatchlings in a sort of slow-motion quiver.
The point is that while you and I are sheltering in place, the world is still turning. Spring is still happening. “All nature sings,” as the hymn goes.
Along with spring and robins, Easter is coming too, and it’s clear we’ll have to celebrate it in a different way this year. There will be no grand processional, no throwing open of the shutters at Wilshire as we sing “Christ the Lord is Risen Today.” Some have suggested that our first Sunday back in church together should be our Easter Sunday this year. It will be a day of celebration, for sure, but I agree with our pastor, who said in a recent Zoom meeting that we should stick to the liturgical calendar and keep Easter where it is. I agree because Easter is not a day to be trifled with, not a day to move around on the calendar to please our desires. Easter should remain set in stone as the day when the stone was rolled away. Besides, I’m sure our very creative Wilshire staff will conceive some meaningful ways for us to celebrate Easter together while we’re apart.
Even so, it’s understandable that we’re anxious to get back to normal. We’re anxious – and we’re hungry.
Wilshire’s Woody Weilage tells me that his Old Testament professor, Dr. William Power, taught that in Genesis 2:7, where it says, “Then the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being,” the words “living being” mean “a living bundle of appetites,” which in Hebrew is the word “nephesh.” Dr. Power told his class that the best illustration he had of “a living bundle of appetites” was when he looked into a bird nest and saw all the little birds waiting to be fed.
That’s what we’re seeing outside our window now when the parent robins fly away and come back with food: the chicks straining their heads upward with their tiny beaks open in anticipation. That’s also what we’re feeling as we live apart, waiting for the virus to clear. We’re straining for the sustenance of community and fellowship.
So while we’re waiting for the “all clear” from the folks who seem to know best, we’ll keep watching the robins gently and faithfully going about their business. We’ll also watch a pair of doves that finally has settled down and chosen a basket too. They know instinctively that warmer, sunnier days are coming, and soon it will be time to fly back out into the new world.