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10:30 am Worship

Thursday, October 17, 2024

Psalm 18: 1-3

¹ I love you, O Lord my strength, O Lord my stronghold, my crag, and my haven.
² My God, my rock in whom I put my trust,
my shield, the horn of my salvation, and my refuge; you are worthy of praise.
³ I will call upon the Lord, and so shall I be saved from my enemies.

I have begun to make birdhouses.

Some years ago, my wife’s cousin started giving us birdhouses. It was a hobby. The first house was fairly simple, four walls, roof and floor, raw wood. As he progressed, the houses became more beautiful. Fancy siding, metal roofs, trim. One was painted, another featured stucco siding, and the shapes became more and more complex.

We installed a row of them on posts along the back side of our little suburban lot and watched expectantly as birds began to move in.

But the next year, occupancy declined, then declined again, and now no birds live in our houses.

I wondered about this and investigated. I found the houses clogged with debris and wasp nests. Sticks and grass, the remains of those early nests. It was impossible, though, to open the houses and clean them out. In his desire to build beautiful birdhouses, he had neglected to create doors to allow cleaning.

As I grew older and less able to endure long sessions in my own workshop, I cast around for something I could accomplish in short work sessions. Thus, bird houses. I began by looking online for videos and articles about birdhouses and discovered huge libraries of material concerning fancy houses. Log cabin birdhouses. Castle birdhouses. Fairyland birdhouses. Houses made in all kinds of fancy shapes and odd sizes. Houses made of wood from a sawmill and an entire array of houses made from natural materials.

The serious articles, such as those from the Audubon Society, pointed to very obvious truths, though. Size mattered. Dimensions were important. The diameter of entries and their placement affected which, if any, birds might use the home. The houses needed to be expertly placed to attract specific species. Some birds want nesting platforms open to the air. Robins. Cardinals. Some, such as large woodpeckers or swallows, will live only in houses placed at great height, while others will even enter a home hanging low on a house or shed.

Most important, each birdhouse should be designed to be cleaned at the end of each nesting season. I learned that a staple included in many designs – a perch just below the entry – was unnecessary. Better, the experts suggested, to use roughcut, raw wood. Many species can cling to it easily. If my boards were too finely finished as they came from the lumber company, I could make them easily usable by scoring them with a saw.

Most of all, I found on the expert sites, simple designs worked best. A roof sloped in one direction. Gaps expertly placed to allow air flow. No paint or artificial materials which might contain chemicals which could affect the birds or their eggs. Each house includes a wall or roof designed for easy and regular removal for cleaning.

My birdhouses are not beautiful. Just practical. They look raw and will soon weather to fit in with the natural environment. I look forward to trying them next summer.  

As I have worked on them, I became amazed how much the hobby compares with prayer and praying. I recalled something Richard Foster, the Quaker writer, once stated.

Every prayer, he wrote, was a new beginning. Prayer, like a birdhouse, is something to which we must return again and again. As we live our lives, new issues arise. New problems. New needs. And it is natural for us to return to the One who provides all. Sometimes our souls become clogged with detritus. Sins. Wrongful desires. Destructive emotion. Prayer becomes the doorway to cleansing. We beg for forgiveness, recognizing our weakness, and ask the master of the house to cleanse it. Then we start over.

Real prayer is natural, simple, and has rough edges. Nothing fancy. No special technique required. No specific body attitude. No particular place or time. It can happen anywhere at any time. No training necessary.

It’s simple, really, and real prayer will soon look weathered and lived in.

I will call upon the Lord.

Hymn of the day: The Prayer. Online at Rossford UMC - Media.

Rev. Lawrence Keeler