When His Beauty Invades Our Ordinary
We were tossing ribbons on our trees like children at a birthday party chucking confetti. What had begun as careful draping and meticulous stringing had spiraled into happy slinging and festive flinging.
We weren’t hanging Christmas lights, for goodness sakes, we were celebrating the advent of spring, welcoming the arrival of orange-bellied robins, and dreaming of rainbow nests cupping fragile blue eggs.
And that’s when we found it. Right then in the middle of our ribbon-tossing gala, in the middle of a damp and drizzly morning painted bright with the giddiness of spring, we spotted it. A long-ago-abandoned nest tucked quietly between the branches of a just-beginning-to-bloom-again bush.
Not just any nest, but a nest built with faded strands of pink and blue rick rack. Threads of love that we’d offered the returning robins last spring.
Josh hollered when he found it, stopped the string-tossing mid-air and wiggled his hand stuffed with scarlet yarn like a cheerleader shaking a pom pom.
“Mom! Mom! Come quick!” (As if the old nest might fly away like the bird who’d once inhabited it).
I sprinkled my last wad of scraps on the tree where I stood and then crossed the yard to my five-year-old’s side. “Mommy,” Josh whispered, his out-of-character quiet capturing the reverence that gleamed in his green eyes. “It’s a rainbow nest. For real.”
I squatted low. Pulled back the calloused branches and peered through the distraction of stubby limbs and brittle leaves.
“Isn’t it beautiful?” my son asked, his hot breath warming my cheek.
I was surprised by the tears that threatened to fall like the raindrops that had slipped from the sky all morning.
Somehow the sight of that old and ordinary nest made my knees weak with gratitude. The abandoned abode wasn’t a blaze of color, just a simple little home crafted with the humble stuff of earth-straw and grass, dirt and twigs-all twined together with a few wisps of jagged string.
Josh pressed his face into the bush, oblivious to the dead leaves and dust that were settling in his hair. And he said it again, in case I hadn’t heard the first time.
“Isn’t it beautiful, Mom? Do you see it Do you see it?”
I nodded, smiled, and sank to my knees in the moist mud so I could view the treasure through my son’s blazing eyes. I kicked off my polka-dot rain boots and let the rich spring mud squish cold between my toes.
We were standing on holy ground. Eye-witnesses to our own little burning bush, the ordinary burning with beauty.An extra-ordinary reminder that Christ is here. Now. In the midst of our commonplace day.
Josh sighed with satisfaction and kicked off his boots, too.
And I praised the One who daily tucks His presence upon the limbs of our prosaic life.
And invites us to behold the timeless threads of glory.
The Overflow: “This is amazing,” Moses said to himself. “Why isn’t that bush burning up? I must go see it.”-Exodus 3:3
Jennifer,
Your whole yard seems threaded with rainbows 🙂 from what I can tell through your posts. Beauty is your forte, friend!
Threads of love… that is so sweet! We need to get some of our threads of love outside soon! It is beautiful. Your son is precious! 🙂
Miss you, too.. especially as the weather warms and I know we are in the “meet me at the park” season of life again. Kiss that new baby for me.
Oh Alicia! I miss you!
I love your rainbow nest that you found!