Where are you building your nest?

We pulled into a truck stop hours away from home. I looked up and some winged creature, likely a sparrow, had planted her family right in the middle of the “e”—over weary truckers rolling in from hundreds of miles on the road, over kids hopping out of SUV’s to make a chocolate milk stop, and over a woman like me, desperate for a restroom break. 

I snapped a picture and we moved on. Less than an hour down the road, we sat on the back porch of a quaint Victorian home eating lunch, and I noticed a gourd hanging from the ceiling. I peered inside. Another family, perhaps wrens, were nesting there—lodging in a lovely house designed especially for them.

A day or so later, I exited a craft store and found my husband staring at the eave. A family of swallows had built a mud nest high in the corner. Apparently, they liked to scrapbook and wanted to have easy access to materials. 

I thought of Psalm 84. “Even the sparrow has found a home, and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may have her young—a place near your altar.” I was reminded of our dear friend and mentor Grady Wigley who often quoted Psalm 84. Early in my walk with the Lord, when I heard him speak so eloquently about these words of the Psalmist, it made me want to build my nest near the Lord's altar, too. 

We’re all building a nest somewhere. In the years since, I've had circumstances arise that made me think about where I was building my nest. Some seasons, it's built in a busy thoroughfare like the swallows and sparrows, or sometimes, it's tucked away in a garden paradise like the wrens. But the point is that no matter where our nests are physically, we can in our hearts say with the Psalmist, “My soul yearns, even faints, for the courts of the Lord; my heart and my flesh cry out for the living God.”

A devotional in Streams in the Desert talks of two artists who illustrated the meaning of rest. The first chose a serene pastoral scene. The second, "threw on his canvas a thundering waterfall, with a fragile birch tree b ending over the foam; and at the fork of the branch, almost wet with the cataract's spray, sat a robin on its nest."

I believe that's what it means to build your nest on the Lord's altar. It means no matter what is happening around us, we find peace in his presence. Even in our busiest times, in the middle of an “e” for example, we continue to rest in Him and "receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need" (Hebrews 4:16).