Out of Season

When my son Brad was in high school, he had a friend who loved to hunt and did so quite often with his father. It wasn't long into their friendship that Rick convinced Brad to go hunting with him and his dad one weekend. Brad has always been my outdoorsy kiddo, so he readily accepted the invitation and left the house at 3:00 a.m. to meet up with Rick and his father. When he returned home late in the afternoon, Brad announced that he was going to learn to hunt ... rather surprising to me since Brad has always been a huge animal lover, but he assured me that any hunting he did would be for food and not for sport. Over the next few months, he began to accumulate all the gear he needed to become a hunter, including purchasing a shotgun, which, I might add, did not make me extremely happy.

I'm not sure how many times Brad has gone hunting, but I am sure that he has never killed any creature ... not one ... not a single one. I've often wondered when Brad would tell me story after story about another one that got away if the real truth was that he simply did not want to shoot an animal ... he just wanted the camaraderie of being with the guys in the great outdoors. One thing I distinctly remember from Brad's hunting days is that there were different times of the year when it was legal to hunt certain animals. There was quail season, deer season, turkey season, and so on. Though I didn't understand all the particulars of the rules and regulations involved, I knew that Brad would purchase certain licenses to hunt certain animals at certain times of the year.

As is true for much of the United States, it has been unseasonably warm in Kansas City this winter ... a few days ago, the temps were in the upper 60s. It's not uncommon for us to be buried in snow at this time of the year, and yet, I saw folks outside last week in shorts and t-shirts. Each evening when I leave work, I drive under a large concrete overpass that in the spring and fall is a perch for literally hundreds of birds. As I drive out on the other side of the overpass, there is a series of power lines that criss-cross the street I'm driving on and the one that intersects it, and again, in the spring and fall those lines are filled with chirping, fluttering birds. Last week, however, each night when I drove home, I noticed that both the overpass and the power lines were covered with birds ... in January. On Friday evening as I waited for the traffic light to change from red to green, I couldn't help but focus my attention on all the birds that were perched on the power lines ... there were so many I could barely see the lines that were holding them. Those crazy birds are confused by this warm weather, I thought ... they don't know where they are supposed to be because it's so warm ... they should have flown south by now ... it's the wrong season for birds on a wire ... birds on a wire are out of season in Kansas in January.

I haven't been able to get those birds out of my mind, and those of you who read this blog regularly know why that is ... God has a lesson He wants me to learn. The more I've thought about the birds, the more I've thought about the season of life I have found myself in for the last year. Just as the birds are confused by the unusually warm temperatures, just as they haven't been able to fly south as they should have by this time of year, just as their internal compasses are askew ... I'm just like those birds. I'm confused by the failure of this season to change ... my inability to fly where I know I should be flying is frustrating and maddening to me ... and many days I feel as though my internal compass is broken beyond repair. Even as I type those words, I also know to the core of my being that I have a Father who is watching over me, a Father who loves me no matter what season of life I am in, a Father who is faithful ... always faithful ... to complete the work He began in me. The prayer of my heart is that I will hold on to His promises and cling to the truth of His Word ... that I will be faithful to Him as He is faithful to me.

"Being confident of this, that He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus." Philippians 1:6