So, when the July sun finally pierced
the clouds for a few hours. I stepped outside to snap a few shots of sunflowers, baby pumpkins, and buzzing bees.
Then, the bottom fell out. Again.
Today, my husband, Jerry, and I
headed out for lunch when, a few hundred feet from our house, we encountered what
looked like a bear jam in Yellowstone Park. People, binoculars, and cameras everywhere.
Of course, we had to stop.
“What are you folks looking at?” I
called from across the road.
A lanky fellow with a camera
shouted back. “A Mississippi Kite and a Swallowtail Kite.”
I stepped over to the crowd, borrowed
binoculars, and studied the skies. Swallow Tails rarely breed north of Florida
or west of coastal areas, and Mississippi Kites usually stay south of North
Georgia as well.
But, sure enough, there the hawks sailed--the falcon shaped Mississippi and the Swallowtail with its
distinctive forked tail
“Storms must have blown them in,”
someone offered.
We exchanged information as I
didn’t have my camera, and the folks whom I learned were with the Audubon
society offered to send me pictures.
Later we returned home. “I’m
going out to see if I can find the birds, again,” I told Jerry and headed for
the car. But as I opened the car door, I paused to see the birds aloft just beyond my
back yard. As I stood there gaping, the birds glided closer and closer, and I
thought the Swallowtail, around twenty-four inches long, might brush the top of
a pine tree in my yard. I couldn’t get the camera to my face fast enough and
missed a picture, but thankfully, I have the one in my memory.
Storms must have blown them in.
George Washington Carver once
said, “I love to think of nature as an unlimited broadcasting station, through
which God speaks to us every hour, if we will only tune in.”
Through the rain and the storms, from
the far reaches, God brought these graceful birds literally to my back door.
What other gifts of grace might he bring through a deluge? What other beauty
might he wrench from the tempest and deliver safe to our portals?
I chased down the birds until I
caught one fleeting picture of the Mississippi.
I haven’t seen the Swallowtail
again since it buzzed my Virginia Pine. It's clouding up again, but I'm still looking up for him. Even if it
rains.
“There’s more to come: We
continue to shout our praise even when we’re hemmed in with troubles, because
we know how troubles can develop passionate patience in us, and how that
patience in turn forges the tempered steel of virtue, keeping us alert for whatever
God will do next. In alert expectancy such as this, we’re never left feeling
shortchanged. Quite the contrary—we can’t round up enough containers to hold
everything God generously pours into our lives through the Holy Spirit! “(Romans 5:3-5 The Message).