The Wonder Filled Day

We just moved.
"Just" as in four weeks ago.
We are down to about 10 boxes left to unpack.
These things take longer than one would expect.
As we have unpacked our boxes we have stacked them up on our back porch. . . behind our porch. . . next to our porch - all around our porch.
We have A LOT of boxes.
It looks really bad.
I feel sorry for our neighbors who can see this horrible pile of trash outside of our house.
I hope they don't worry that we will just leave it there.
I know I should not worry about "what they will think" what they think is their own business.
But we really just want to take one day cut the boxes up, tie them with twine and then as space in our recycle bin allows put the stuff out to be recycled (yeah for curbside recycling!)
So we have this largish pile of cardboard boxes exploding off our porch.
But not so badly that it covers our whole yard.
But an eyesore nonetheless.

Yesterday, the sun was gently making its way through the cloud cover.
I was working in the kitchen.
I had the back door open and the storm door shut.
I would look out and look at a out small but beautifully green (I just moved from Kansas) backyard.
As I did so a sparrow landed on the top of the boxes.
She looked at me and I looked at her.
My mother has instilled in me a love for all things bird and I was thrilled to see her.
I noticed she had some twigs or whatnot in her beak.
As I watched her, she hopped inside a box.
That is when I noticed it.
She had a built herself a nest inside one of the boxes on our back porch.

Here I am feeling bad because we have this horrible eyesore in our backyard and within is this beautiful little nest.
What I think is a horrible thing on my back porch, she saw as wonderful, perfect and safe.
She is willing to build her home in my eyesore, lay her eggs in my eyesore and raise her family there.
I am embarrassed by it.
She believes it to be wonderful and safe.

(brief interlude where I sing, "His Eye is on the Sparrow" in my head)

Her little nest in my "trash" makes me wonder.
Is there beauty in all the "trash" out there?
Are we too quick to judge that something or someone as useless?
When all it takes is a different person with a different eye to see something completely different, something completely perfect?

I look at my life.
Often my life if it is not trash, is so filled with trash, my trash as well as the trash from the world around me.
Trash with which I have filled my life.
As well as trash with which others have filled my life.
What does God see when looking at me and my life?
Does God see all the trash?
Does God see the mess that I have made of my life?
Or does God see something perfect, something wonderful?
Is God like this little bird?
Willing to make a home inside that which I see only as a huge mess?
Willing to dwell within the mess I have made of my life and by inhabiting me, making something (me) that would otherwise just be a huge mess made from the turmoil of life into something beautiful and wonderful.
Using me, making me into what I am not. Perfect.

Update: June 16th - All the boxes but this box are gone from my porch and the nest now has eggs!