Delight

I sat on the back deck this morning finally enjoying the sunshine we've been missing all week. I feel a deep need for cleansing this morning. I feel cluttered with chores -- small and large, significant and inconsequential, internal and external, social and individual, stuff I have control over and stuff I'm responsible for but feel very little control over. I'm tired. And I have too much going on to give in to tiredness. Not exactly what I wanted my summer to feel like.

Most mornings, when I sit on my deck, I can hear a chorus of various songbirds from throughout my yard, and this morning was no different. I closed my eyes for a minute, trying to calm my mind by singling out the calls of individual birds amongst the symphony.

And then one bird landed on the table in front of me. I'm completely ignorant about birds (one of my MANY areas of ignorance), so I couldn't tell you what kind of bird it was. Small, brown, fat, with a skinny pointy beak. He hopped around a little bit looking at me and looking around, making some weird little noise that sounded like he was calling for someone. I wondered how stupid this bird was. There was nothing for him on my deck.

But there was something soothing in watching his feathers ruffling in the breeze, his head twirking around. And then suddenly, he opened his beak and let out the most fascinating little series of melodic twitters. And after a pause he did it again . . . and again . . . and again. I just sat there and delighted in this fat, little dumb bird sing his heart out on my back deck.

The Lord takes delight in his people (Psalm 149). Really, Lord? I usually feel so undelightful. Small, fat, plain, dumb. An insignificant peon in the masses. But do you really look down on little plain me and delight in me? Delight in me? That's enough to get me through the day.