Waiting on The Birdbath to Thaw

A friend of mine posted on FB this last week "We are now open for bird ice skating!"  With a picture of a frozen over bird bath and the thought of birds ice-skating made me smile. But as I thought about it, actually a frozen bird bath is an inconvenience to a bird not a delightful event.  Where I had been thinking of doing a picture of ice skating birds with smiles on their faces and tying to the verse from Matthew 6 to it

"  Look at the birds of the air, that they do not sow, nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not worth much more than they? And who of you by being worried can add a single hour to his life" 

I began to think-- a frozen bird bath, while beautiful and whimsical-- its actually a hardship to the birds. A source of help was inaccessible.  A place of fun gone. And if that frozen over bird bath were all I could focus on it would be depressing-- if not for the promise

O Lord, how many are Your works!
In wisdom You have made them all;
The earth is full of Your possessions.
²⁵ There is the sea, great and broad,
In which are swarms without number,
Animals both small and great.
²⁶ There the ships move along,
And Leviathan, which You have formed to sport in it.

²⁷ They all wait for You
To give them their food in due season.
Psalm 104

Life at times can be hard.  Even more so when others around you are rejoicing. I'm reminded of the line from the movie Sense and Sensibility 

ELINOR

            What do you know of my heart? What 
                         do you know of anything but your own 
                         suffering? For weeks, Marianne, I 
                         have had this pressing on me without 
                         being at liberty to speak of it to a 
                         single creature. It was forced upon 
                         me by the very person whose prior 
                         claims ruined all my hopes. I have 
                         had to endure her exultation again 
                         and again while knowing myself to be 
                         divided from Edward forever. Believe 
                         me, Marianne, had I not been bound 
                         to silence I could have produced 
                         proof enough of a broken heart even  

for you.

At times though we may try and be happy, our griefs are heavy to bear and even compounded. But let the word of God encourage you and take a lesson from the frozen birdbath. He attends to all in their due season. And like winter-- it will end-- and the ice will thaw, and the place where joy was once found will be found again-- or there will be an even better place of iceless joy.  Though sometimes the winters are short and other times longer-- it is really just a season and not forever. 

This one hope we have as Christians is, that in Christ, eventually there will be a spring that never ends.

In the meantime, my prayers goes out to all those who read this and find they are stuck in a frozen bird bath.