look to the birds

Transitions are hard for me. For all my love of adventure (and love for an adventurer), I find a great deal of joy in the coziness of home, in the quiet rhythms of daily life in a settled place. These in-between times (which I seem to attract like a transition magnet) leave me a little shaken, a little trembly. I feel like I'm one of the birds I saw outside last week, wooed north by the unusually warm March and then caught in an April snowstorm: they quivered like lost children, fluffing up their feathers for warmth, bravely shouting warnings and encouragement to each other.

But in his sermon yesterday Josh read those familiar words: Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground outside your Father's care. And even the very hairs on your head are all numbered. So don't be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.

Jesus gives this bit of comfort in the middle of a discourse on how hard it will be to take part in his new Way, how persecution will follow those who resist the status quo, those who indiscriminately scatter blessings and trust the Most High for sustenance and justice. He claims that these people he sends out are known, even when they leave their loved ones for the greater cause. He reminds his followers, as he so often does, that he is inviting them into an economy of abundance, a temporality of hope.

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The snow melted on Saturday afternoon, soaking into the soil down here in the valley, while it stuck up in the mountains (as it needed to do). The grass is astonishingly green, the bushes and trees unfurling their leaves. Our front tree dropped many of its buds yesterday like little brown specks of regret, but Josh says there's time for it to catch up. He reminds me that this has all happened before, that it will happen again. The birds are chattering and catching up on feeding (my breadcrumbs may help). There is, it seems, more than enough life to go around.