We have a light fixture over our front door that glints in the sun and is attractive to birds. Every year without fail, a bird tries to build its nest on that light. Because I know that any nest that is built there is bound to fall, I always break up the nests just as the birds begin to make them. After several frustrating attempts, they move to a large maple tree in our garden, and there safely build their seasonal home far from any danger of falling.

Like those unknowing feathered creatures, we too, oftentimes find that our dreams and plans are frustrated and lead to failure. We cannot help but wonder why God allows the earthly nests that we struggle so hard and work to build to fall apart and crumble before us. But the fact is that we cannot see as God does; if we too could judge events from the perspective of eternity, we would come to understand that God seeks for us a higher destiny, and a place of true serenity and provision for our deepest needs.

Scripture teaches us that God led his people of Israel out of Egypt and into a forty-year journey of hardship in a lonely and forbidding wilderness. And yet, at the end of that journey, they were led from bondage to a glorious land that flowed with milk and honey. From down trodden slaves, He transformed them into a mighty nation envied by others.

How wonderful it would be if we could each learn to trust God in those times when we too experience the dark passages that enter our lives. How reassured we would be if we never questioned God’s wisdom and goodness, even at those times when we find him disturbing the nests that we try to build.

When we come to accept the providential care of God with childlike simplicity we soon discover that the barriers we encounter in our lives, can in retrospect, come to be numbered among our greatest blessings.