In the circle of life, it is apparent that we bypass in hurry what contemplation and slow will confront and refocus us towards. When the delicate balance of life play right before your face it changes how you interpret the different players in the ecosystem. It is morning as always the routines of life and duty unfolds, unlocking the door to see and greet the birds that I rear which have a very transactional relationship with me. They pass through my feet in a race to catch worm, murmuring and complaining why I took that long to open the door for them. For they woke up early and I had delayed the catch
This particular morning, the routine in check the stock, spot any unlikely behaviour within the flock. I reach towards the chicks and a chick which I bid bye yester evening in perfect health lies there lifeless, in health! To my amazement the ones that looked weak and struggling seem too be fairing just fine. In the farm we are used to see life sprout, whether be a just hatched chick or the first blade that bud above ground from seeds previously committed to the soil, they are sacred, delicate and precious. Swinging to the other extreme of the pendulum to see life snuffed out by various conspiring aspects of the fallen world. To see hope and newness and to be brought to the ugly and heartbreak of deaths. That is real life playing before our faces. To see the health snuffed and the weakly resilient is the paradox of this morning. The singing petition of Hannah best captures this paradox in amazing light ‘The bows of the mighty are broken, but the feeble bind on strength. 1 Samuel 2:4. The seasons and array of emotions that we are daily invited is mind-blowing and the capacity for the heart for a moment to catch a grief or bubble in joyfulness is divine ingenious.
Such is the invitation to anyone who interact with the living! The fragility, sacredness and preciousness of all that endear the heart. The frame that sinks under the weight can raise in gladness and merry. The ability to enjoy all that providence designs for our joy and grief in the same hand of providence that has handed us a sorrow. For in the circle of life all this paints a marvelous picture that only such mingling can offer. Yes, my chicks have in the same breath been lots of joy and disappointment yet lessons are all we can collect with us.
My final reflection is, we must never outgrow the sacred nature that our daily interaction gifts us with, we must never be like machines that are incapable of feeling and seared in us the compacity to empathize or process events. We must regain this human capacity be fully aware of the fragile nature of life. Â We must also stop the fantasies we entertain that only the weakly die, even the healthy can die when it is least expected, for today is the only piece in the timeline that we can claim as truly ours and we are not to live on the borrowed hope of tomorrow which may never come. Life that we live is a borrowed life, resident in Christ Jesus Our Lord, for whoever has the Son has life and whoever does not have the Son does not have life.