Simple Joys - A Safe Place

with Jan @ Simple Joys in our Life

One of my simple joys for this week was right on my front door.

The front porch of my house catches the first rays of the sun, before the heat of the day has time to make it go from pleasant to scorching...

This makes an ideal spot for ferns and coleus and other shade loving plants. I like to hang ferns all around the edge of the porch...and the birds tend to like the fact that I like to do that...

Every spring since we moved here, mother birds would build nests in the ferns in anticipation of their eggs hatching in a “safe” place...and each spring we would have visiting neighborhood cats decide to party on our front porch at night...

The baby birds never made it for very long.

Despite the baskets being hung as high as possible, the natural instinct of these wandering felines led them to scale railings and jump with Olympic fervor towards the sounds they heard and the scents they smelled...

So after two times of trying to explain to the grandkids what happened to the bird eggs or baby birds, crumpled aluminum foil became the standard decoration for the center of the plants...

THIS spring, a brave mother bird decided to build her nest in the basket of silk greenery that was hung on the front door...

Would this work? We do go in and out the front door quite often...how would she react when the babies were in the nest? Would she get upset while I tended to the plants on the porch each morning?

I am happy to report that it DID work out perfectly...when the mother would hear the door being unlocked, she would swoop over to an observation point in a neighboring tree...she never fussed or called out loudly...but just perched...watching and waiting until the door was shut again...

We enjoyed hearing the little peeps of the babies...and watching the hardworking parents feeding their young...

Monday morning when I opened the door, the nest was empty...

But it was intact...a souvenir of a temporary home...one that was guarded day and night...and never left alone...

I was joyful because the birds had survived the first stretch of their brief time here on earth...sheltered under a porch roof...and a watchful eye...

When we as children of God, remain in the shadow of His wings...we are in the safest place we can possibly be in this temporary home...

He will not move away from us...but if we choose to leave His shelter...He will be watching...and waiting... for us to return home...for unlike the nest of the baby birds...our home is everlasting...