When building a birdhouse for your feathered friends, the size of the “front door” is crucial.
You must create the right-sized entrance hole or the “wrong” bird will take up residence.
For instance, a wren or chickadee prefers an entrance hole to be about 1.125 inches across. A bluebird likes a slightly bigger doorway, about 1.5 inches in diameter.
A finch needs an opening 2 inches across, thank you very much, and purple martins prefer a bit more wiggle room than that to squeeze through the front door.
And if you don’t surround the hole with protective metal mesh, the squirrels will chew the hole bigger and move in themselves. Then you’ll discover you’re the proud owner of a squirrel house (I learned this the hard way).
All of this got me thinking about the story of Noah’s Ark in the Bible…
Don’t you love it when an underdog turns the tables?
We’ve all cheered at movies in which the little guy triumphs over impossible odds and wins the day.
Part of what makes these stories attractive is the confidence the underdog displays in the face of adverse circumstances. He or she often thinks that it’s the other guy who’s at a disadvantage.
I’m reminded of a classic headline from a British newspaper, possibly from the early 1930s (and possibly apocryphal). The English Channel was blanketed with thick fog, making ship travel dangerous. The witty headline read:
“Fog in Channel: Continent Isolated.”
What makes this funny is that surely it was the island of Great Britain that was isolated by the dense fog, not Continental Europe!
You’ve got to admire this type of self-assurance.
I think this the type of attitude God wants us to display, but to focus it on faith and trust in Him. He wants us to believe that with Him on our side, the one who comes against is the one who’s isolated and on the ropes.
Consider the story of David and Goliath in the Bible…
Have you ever wondered why the universe is so immensely big?
Astronomers at NASA suggest that the most distant objects in the universe are about 47 billion light years away from Earth. This would make the size of the observable universe about 94 billion light years across. (A light year is the distance light travels in one year, about 6 million million miles.)
But that just describes the extent of our observable limits. The universe is vastly larger than that, because it is expanding at a rapid rate.
If there is an “edge” to the universe, it’s expanding away from us faster than we could ever catch up. No matter how swift our spaceship, we would never hit a boundary of some kind.
So for all practical purposes, you could say that the universe is infinitely big.
Many believe that a BBC TV hoax from over 60 years ago takes the cake.
In 1957 the news show Panorama reported that, thanks to a mild winter in Switzerland, the dreaded spaghetti weevil had been eradicated. As a result, Swiss farmers had enjoyed a bumper crop of spaghetti. The programme showed farmers carefully plucking strands of spaghetti from trees.
Scores of viewers fell for the prank, calling the BBC and asking how they could grow a spaghetti tree themselves. They were advised to “place a spring of spaghetti in a tin of tomato sauce and hope for the best.”
There must be something in the water at the BBC, because in 1980 their pranksters were at it again. On April Fool’s Day they announced that Big Ben, London’s iconic clock tower, would become digital and henceforth be known as Digital Dave. This “news” produced a flood of irate calls to the station.
Other European countries are no slouches at April Fool’s pranks either.
In 1969 the Netherlands’ public broadcaster announced that government inspectors would be roving the streets armed with remote scanners, detecting people who had not paid their TV/radio tax. It was suggested that the only way to stymie the scanners was to wrap the TV or radio in aluminum foil. The next day, all the supermarkets were sold out of foil, and suddenly a flood of TV/radio taxes were being paid.
These probably rate as some of the best wide-scale practical jokes ever.
But with Easter Monday falling on April Fool’s Day this year, it got me thinking of an ever greater example of someone being outwitted.
Deciduous trees lose their leaves in the autumn. Coniferous trees bear cones and keep their needles throughout the year. It’s simple to tell them apart.
Case closed, right?
But what about the larch tree? It bears cones and has needles like a conifer, but the needles drop off each autumn like a deciduous tree.
So which is it, coniferous or deciduous?
The answer to this mystery is that it’s both at once. The larch tree is actually a “deciduous conifer.”
Larches fall into a special third category of tree. It’s a member of the pine family, and yet its wood is harder than pine wood; it’s more like the hardwood of deciduous trees. It has needles like a conifer, but they turn a golden yellow each autumn and drop off, like the leaves of a deciduous tree.
Larches are a rare combination of deciduous and coniferous, unique trees with characteristics of both.
You could say that larches are two things at the same time.
In the same way, you could say that Jesus was two things at once. Just as the larch is one tree with two natures, Jesus was one being with dual natures: both God and human.
The Taj Mahal, in Agra, India, is considered to be one of the world’s most beautiful buildings, and rightly so.
Built from white marble, it was commissioned in 1631 by Shah Jahan as a memorial to his favourite wife, Mumtaz Mahal, who died that year giving birth to their fourteenth child.
For many in India and around the world, the Taj Mahal is an iconic symbol of love. Every stone and jewel used in its construction speaks of the tremendous affection the Shah had for his wife, and his grief at her passing. To many people, the Taj Mahal is the embodiment of love.
If you live in eastern North America, you might be lucky enough to have seen a gorgeous bird called the northern cardinal.
The male is especially distinctive, with his breathtaking red plumage and black “mask” on his face.
Up here in Canada, the cardinal is at the northernmost part of its range. We’re especially fortunate that, unlike many songbirds, cardinals don’t migrate south for the winter. We get to enjoy their presence year-round.
But what on earth do the cardinals eat here, when parts of Canada might be covered in several feet of snow?
I’ll bet that for many of us, car chases on TV shows or in films are a guilty pleasure.
There’s invariably a suspenseful moment where it looks like the bad guys have the heroes at their mercy: they’re coming at the protagonists head-on. The good guys are forced to throw their car into reverse to escape their pursuers.
It seems like the baddies have the upper hand, because our heroes are at the disadvantage of driving backwards.
But then comes the thrilling moment when the good guys make a 180-degree reverse turn, spin their car around, and peel off facing forwards without losing any speed. The bad guys are left in the dust.
Our heroes have just performed a “J-turn.”
This evasive driving technique is a staple of almost every action film with a car-chase scene. It was made famous in the old detective show “The Rockford Files,” in which it was Jim Rockford’s signature maneuver. The J-turn is also called the “reverse 180” or simply “The Rockford Turn.”
The master of J-turns in the Bible was none other than Jesus.
Although he never drove a car, Jesus was adept at rescuing people by suddenly reversing their situation.
The shortest day of the year in the northern hemisphere is the winter solstice, which occurred last year on December 21st. From that day on, the days begin to lengthen and the sun’s position in the sky begins to rise from our perspective.
But if the days are now getting longer and we’re getting more sunlight, why does it keep getting colder and snowier here in January and February?
Where is spring?
There are two reasons for this temperature lag: one having to do with the tilt of the earth, the other with how slowly the earth heats up and cools down in response to the sun’s energy.
Think of a rock near a bonfire. When the fire is first lit, the rock will stay cool for a while. It takes time for it to heat up, even though it’s being exposed to a roaring fire. The rock will eventually absorb the fire’s heat, though, and will retain that heat for a while even after the fire is put out.
Similarly, even though the days are now lengthening, it takes time for the earth to warm up, resulting in colder temperatures in the early months of the year. The earth is also slow to release accumulated heat energy from the sun after the summer solstice in June. This gives us hotter July and August days in the northern hemisphere, even as the days are getting shorter.
In the same way, sometimes we pray about something but don’t see any immediate results. There seems to be an inexplicable “lag” in receiving answers to our prayers. We don’t see any evidence that things are changing; in fact, our situation might seem to get worse.
What’s going on? Where is our “spring”?
I think we need to understand that God can answer our prayers in several ways.
If you live in a cold climate, have you ever woken up to discover that there had been an ice storm overnight? You look outside to find the bare branches of the trees are encased in a thick layer of ice.
The effect can be absolutely stunning. The branches glisten and sparkle in the sunlight. People rush outside to take photos of the ice-covered trees.
But the beauty masks a danger: those bare branches are at risk. They were never meant to carry the weight of so much ice. The branches may break off, and the tree can be left devastated.
Do you ever feel like you’re carrying too much “weight”?
We often take on too much responsibility in our lives; we carry too much weight on our shoulders. We try to juggle being a spouse, parent, employee, friend, and volunteer. It may look impressive from the outside: people might even admire our glistening, seemingly perfect lives.
But behind the facade lies an uncomfortable fact: we’re at risk. We were never meant to carry all those burdens ourselves. It may seem like we’re coping, but the weight will soon become too much to bear.
The Faith Cafe 