Empty Nest

It was about a year ago in June 2023 when my son got married. 

Two weeks before he officially “left the nest” a brood of birds was hatching right outside his bedroom window in the weeping cherry tree. Day by day I witnessed the activity of momma bird constructing the nest and caring for her young.  Although, it seems quite illustrative that I would miss these little fledglings fly away from the nest while I went away to Nashville to watch mine.

I quite literally came home to an empty nest.

Less than one full year has passed and in June 2024 my daughter has birthed her fourth little hatchling, Ruth Annette.

The end of one’s nesting begins another’s.

I have a sweet window into this momma bird and her activity.  She is busy.  She is beyond selfless, extremely provisional and dare I say, exhausted!  Every chirp is heard and handled.  I see momma bird coming and going, coming and going, coming and going.

You want to know what the Kingdom of God is like?

“The Kingdom of God is like a tiny mustard seed planted in a garden; it grows and becomes a tree and the birds make nests in its branches.”

Jesus said to make the Kingdom of God your primary concern.

You want to know what this little momma bird is busy doing?

She is primarily making the Kingdom of God

…in the season of the full nest.

Luke 13:19

Matthew 6:33

Adoration

“…and I will ADORE you.”

I have recently begun my prayer time with the lyrics to this song in adoration to the Lord.

I find myself repeating this chorus. It’s how I am working to get in the mindset of my word for the year.

Adoration.

For me, this is a deliberate and conscious effort.  I have a history and a tendency and even a hurry to go straight into my begging and pleading, throw in some lamenting.  But, rarely ADORING.  I have been known to reduce God to a casual greeting.

In recognition of me not being great at spending much time in adoring Him, I tried to intentionally fit its rightful place in my time of prayer.  Because, its appearance was so rare, my introduction of it felt clumsy.

Adore?

What does that even mean?

I know it, intellectually.  “Utmost esteem.”   That’s the greatest and highest amount.  None greater.  That means my highest love.  Of course, I love God.  But, is it my utmost? Of course, I respect and admire God.  But, can none go higher?  I can’t help but put it up against those in my life who experience my full-fledged adoration.  When I compare that with my innermost feelings, I begin to question where I have God, actually.

So, I’d find myself stopping first and mustering up this emotion before proceeding in prayer.  How can I be so breezy?  I know adoration is important to Him, because it’s important for me.  A bold prayer from King David to the Lord was, “point out anything that offends you.”  So, I know He can be offended.

Don’t misunderstand.  I’m amazed He charts my path and both precedes and follows me.  A hand of blessing is on my head. Yet, the issue I discovered for myself is I don’t always bubble up with the same intensity of spirit in devoted love for him the Creator, as I recognized that I do in ease with those He created for me.  My heart can physically ache and devotion deeply roused for those God gave me and formed in His image. So, similar to that, how can this same spirit of mine intensify in like manner to His formless Presence.

It’s hard for me to admit that I can easily feel the desire of those around me more genuinely and real than the One I’ve never seen.  Why can cherishing, loving dearly, holding in admiration be more natural with those He made for me instead of, “the Spiritual Almighty” who made them.

I stop myself from trying to reduce Him to an imaginable and tangible God within my limited thoughts and ways.  His nature, so divine, sacred, and holy.  Mine is not.  I’m just a dot.  I am small.  Hardly perceptible.  Scarcely detectable.  Yet, somehow, praise God …recognizable.

But, this too is by design.

I cry out in real emotions to His spiritual presence that I try and “will this” to be.

I call on the Holy Spirit to help me.

I just can’t love ones on earth greater than the love of He.

Even if He’s not physical,

I can adore His invisible, yet present Holy Trinity.

I grapple and think it’s like saying I love air.  But, then the wind blows and I’m touched.  I’m refreshed.  I breathe it in.  It expands my lungs and sustains my very life giving me every waking moment by moment.  Breath by breath.  He is in the air and I’m blown away.  “Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too great for me to know.”

His Spirit is a presence.   It’s occurring at this time!  At this very moment!

This is a gift coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights.  “Every good and perfect gift is.”

He comforts in a heavenly holy lap.  He envelopes in an ethereal embrace.  He cushions in His celestial care.  I bear down on my thoughts to increase the volume. I imitate David in Psalm 139 and Solomon in Kings. Not wanting to sound disingenuous like royalty but not irreverent with my words so contemporary.  I position myself on two knees literally.  I symbolically bow to Thee.  Isn’t this what it must take to accept one as unworthy and complicated as me?

I repeat back to God His attributes.

I visually lay them down at the foot of His cross and remember “He Who’s Overall” using the technique of pointillism to produce a degree of luminosity.

Small dot by small dot I replicate a cross over every people, tribe, language and nation.

It’s to Him I pray with all creation.

He will work forever on my sanctification.

For me, right now,

this is my adoration.

Psalm 139    

James 1:17

Revelation 7:9

Anticipation

Snow is predicted.

If you’re from around these Ohio Valley parts, you already know that it probably isn’t much.  It seems it never is. But, I still let a winter weather advisory stir up an immediate anticipation of possible accumulation.  They say anticipation can be the best part.  I suppose that’s good because anticipation is usually all we get.

I mean, in February, a forecast like that doesn’t surprise me.  But, we get teased so much with spring-tide shenanigans in north-central Kentucky that I’m a hold out until we get a proper winter forecast.  I’ve usually waited for a winter that should have happened in December.  Then.  A winter that should have happened in January.  And, even though we’re known for having all four seasons, including this one, it’s ever so slowly turning into this confused murky-muddled clouded coolness that’s never any winter season at all.

Just the same, my hopes get ramped up with commanding and promising forecasts.  But, February is likely it. The last hopeful chance of a winter for the season. I always anticipate with glee the highest predictable possibility of accumulation.  I desperately hope not to be disheartened by a follow-up forecast that snow isn’t developing at all.  I know ground warmth will likely limit its greatest chance, but it’s February - there’s still a chance.  I know there is a band of pressure that will or won’t come together, but it’s February - there’s still a band. I want snow to hurry and materialize before March hurries to slip in all sly-like.

These are my winter emotions and they get wrapped up in every winter forecast. I get giddy.  I can’t help it. But truth is, nobody seems to know how to predict a forecast. I’m waiting with just as much anticipation for a forecast to be prefaced with, “If the Lord so chooses.”

“To the snow He says, ‘Fall on the earth.’

He loads thick clouds with moisture.

They turn around and around by His guidance.

to accomplish all that He commands them

on the face of this habitable world.”

With so much anticipation,

I wait on the Lord.

Job 37: 5-13

Adore

Do you choose a word for the year?

I am not dismissive of this New Year challenge the way I grew up to be.  I have found that it can re-center my tendency to be all over the place.  Although, I have to have a physical act like deliberately writing it out first thing each morning.

My morning journaling is a natural place for this to begin. 

I also have found it most helpful to attach scripture to my ONE WORD to help frame a position for my heart.

“Yours, O Lord is the greatness, the power, the glory, the victory, and the majesty.  Everything in the heavens and on earth is Yours, O Lord, and this is Your kingdom. We adore you as the One who is over all things.”

I have discovered that if you commit such a task to the Lord, He will respond.  He says He does.

I mean, He says to commit everything you do to the Lord.  He also says to trust Him and He’ll help you.“The eyes of the Lord search the whole earth in order to strengthen those whose hearts are fully committed to Him.”  So I commit.

If it’s inconceivable to think His eyes search the whole earth to strengthen your heart, it occurred to my husband one day when coming up on a red traffic jam on his GPS that surely if a computer made by man can speak back and forth to millions of phones individually and can know their location, make them aware of upcoming trouble and suggest reroutes - surely, the God of the universe who created humans has a greater global navigating system to find and direct you.

That’s not hard to see.

Truth is, God positions Himself in our lives whether we see it or not. Just because he seems hidden, doesn’t mean he is.

When this seems difficult to comprehend, I like viewing one image from an artist who uses it to form another image with positive and negative space. This purposeful design shifts our perspective. It’s an image often difficult to find, but one that has been there all along.

My own ONE WORD was a challenge to discover this year.  I prayed the Lord would shine light on one.

You know how it’s said that God can open a window when you pray?

I did.

This year it’s adore.

1 Chronicles 29:11

Psalm 37:15

2 Chron 16:9