I heard him before I saw him—Jim and a robin, whistling back and forth in lively conversation.

“Don’t worry, I have sunscreen on,” he yelled from the backyard, squinting up into the light. Blue skies, still air and 71 degree temps urged us both outside, I went as far the upper deck.

A soft gray catbird feeds on our deck, almost close enough to pet. I suspect she’s looking forward to summer’s raspberries dribbling down her beak, I’m no competition when it comes to berry picking.

An eastern towhee danced his jig in the yard, scratching for dinner under the leaves. Is he like me, in awe of our red bud with tiny fuchsia flowers hugging branches like form-fitted evening gloves? When a pair of bright orange Baltimore orioles visited our suet for hours, I felt like God was playing a nature video before my eyes.

Our first hummer has arrived – is it a repeat visitor? How do they know to come? A speaker at Todd Bird Club siaid he banded hummingbirds and he identified two that returned the next year, flying back to Pennsylvania from some distant winter retreat. Today is the Migration Bird Count, but I’ve been in Shadyside Hospital. Heading home now, no procedures done, and my future, as always, is in God’s hands. Thank you for your prayers! I’m posting this earlier my usual than midnight because Jim is driving through snow to get me and when we will reach home is anybody’s guess. One more chance to trust Jesus.

Behind all the feathered activityis the sound of our waterfall, where silhouetted birds bathe early in the day. My senses lead my exploration, without me ever leaving my perch. Sight, sound, aromas… these frame the way I view the world.

There’s so much more, invisible to the eye. Some force calls birds in ancient patterns of migration, others design the predictability of the seasons. Other unseen realities are more formidable, like microbes spreading virus. Cancer is beyond my sight too, yet lab work and scans guide my doctors in choosing the next right thing to do.

I can’t see these enemies but I know, This is my Father’s world. O let me ne’er forget that though the wrong seems oft so strong, God is the ruler yet.

Things of the spirit are beyond our sight, yet are the most real of all to those who believe.

Can we see or taste love? Love drives Jim to hang sheets on the line in the morning breeze and to make homemade sourdough bread, a flour-everywhere, two-day process.

Fr. Leo Maasburg, author of Mother Teresa of Calcutta said he thought the saint couldn’t touch bread without thoughts of the Eucharist, the broken, suffering body of Christ. I miss sharing the cup and bread in community during this quarantine. To kneel at an altar and arise renewed, knowing who blood flows through my own, makes me yearn for those times to return.

With Mother’s Day upon us, it is easier to describe my heritage lilacs blooming than tell you how they bind my heart to my mother’s, gone nine years from my sight.

“In the Garden” was her favorite hymn; she called fragrant lilacs, “our family flower.” Finally unable to get down on the ground, she raised zinnias and petunias in pots to brighten walkways for neighbors.

Mom didn’t over-think her faith, she simply accepted the Good News at the heart of all being and passed along that faith to her children, teaching us hymns like,

This is my Father’s world, And to my listening ears All nature sings, and round me rings The music of the spheres.

This is my Father’s world:

I rest me in the thought

Of rocks and trees, of skies and seas;

His hand the wonders wrought.”

If I said the peas in Jim’s raised beds are beginning to pucker through the soil as pale sprouts, you’d believe me. But do you trust the Maker of the seed?

Robert Schuller is credited with saying you can count the seeds in an apple but only God can count the apples in a seed. Every farmer who plants new rows in fields knows it takes work, faith, prayer and a little imagination to reap a harvest from a handful of seeds.

Creatures and gardens are more than accidents of nature, more than the work of our hands. Josh McDowell calls the Gospel stories Evidence that Demands a Verdict, the title of his best selling book.

Evidence, on a wing and a prayer. As St. Peter wrote to the early church (1 Peter 1:8 NIV):

Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy…”

Whatever we have lost, whatever the future holds, this cannot be taken away. 

All will be well.