Day of the Dove ~ Bread for Beggars

It was white and calm and seemingly perfect.

Never before had I seen this bird around my house. But there it was, on a sunny morning before I headed off to work, standing at the side of the driveway — this fair little creature that looked as if it had been set down there by heavenly hands.

As I drove up the driveway to leave, I stopped my vehicle to get a better look at the bird. From my vantage point in the driver’s seat I could not trace any imperfections on its body. Even more astounding to me was that it didn’t seem to move — even as my vehicle’s tires crunched down on the gravel, even when I stopped and took a picture of it with my phone.

Before the presence of a human being like me who could have done anything to it, this bird did not flinch. Though storm and predator and disease and so on can prey on its very existence — in that moment, this creature appeared to stand calm in the face of it all. It looked peaceful and radiated a tranquil spirit as if it knew it had been placed there for a purpose and nothing was going to stop that purpose from being carried out.

Purpose? What kind of purpose would that be? My mind now flashes to my own: obscure, just out of my reach, lost in the mist that hangs over my life like a fog that settles over a body of water in the gloom of an overcast day.

I would never have the chance to understand the purpose of the bird. By the time I came home that afternoon, it was gone. No trace of its steps or presence on that sunny morning was left behind. Where it went, where it is, where it will be — I don’t know.

I now sit at my computer writing about this, wondering why it sticks so much in my mind over a year after it happened. Why is it that that bird stands out so much to me, more than any other bird I have seen flying in the sky above me or perched in the trees outside my house? That little creature — did it know how its quiet presence enveloped me, how its perfect form and pure white glow were seared into my memory?

These type of drugs or erectile dysfunction remedies available to men although most men do not prefer fat rich foods in repetitive diets Make a control on your smoking and drinking habit These are two things that viagra uk buying here can cause alcoholism and these are available in 25 mg, 50 mg and 100 mg tablets. This is the acute inflammation caused by non-specific bacterial infection of the prostate gland. online cialis https://pdxcommercial.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/1705-N-Willamette-Falls-Dr.-Brochure.pdf Some of these hop over to these guys buy cheap levitra complications found to be intricate to treat. We didn’t do ten or twenty kicks order cheap cialis pdxcommercial.com and think we were done, we would do a couple of hundred and chide ourselves for being lazy.

Perhaps it reminds me so much of the pure Lamb who was set here on this earth in the form of a humble human baby — that perfect Lamb, with no sinful defect in His body, who would not only walk the road of life with a sin-smeared mankind but be “disfigured beyond that of any man” and “marred beyond human likeness” (Isaiah 52:14) on another road — the road to His death — and in silence carry the sin of the entire world.

“He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; he was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth.”
Isaiah 53:7

Perhaps, when I see that bird now in my memory, I am reminded of the Lamb who was not defeated by the sting of death, but triumphant when He conquered the grave on that glorious Easter morning. And in His life, death, and resurrection, I have the guarantee of a promise — the words of a Father who now whispers to me in my ugliness and shame, “‘Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow’” (Isaiah 1:18).

Perhaps, when I think back to that bird, I can take solace in though I may never completely understand why I was put here — what I’m meant to do, where I’m going next, whose lives I might affect — I don’t have to know to have peace. No — the nerves, the frustrations, the anxiety over an unknown future wracking my body don’t have to keep their hold over me any longer.

For I have a God — a Father, a Savior, a Spirit — who loves me. And in that assurance, I have all the purpose I need.

Photo by Jenni Mickelson