Our Stories
Spiritual Pane
By Stew | posted 08/14/2008
“To everything there is a season, a time for every purpose under heaven.” (Ecclesiastes 3:1, NKJ)
The other day I awoke to the sound of a bird colliding with a window. The bird and pane made a distinctive sound: an initial click and thud followed by a brief shudder. I'd heard the sound before, so knew what it was. Usually a bird can shake off the collision and fly away, especially if the collision is just a glancing blow, but sometimes the crash is head-on at high speed and the result is fatal. This time I didn't check to find out, and simply went back to sleep.
Later that morning I arose and prepared to leave the house. I was in a bit of a hurry, and proceeded out the front door, when there I saw the bird. It had hit a nearby window and lay dead on the welcome mat. When faced with a dead bird on your welcome mat (or in this case a "Wipe Your Paws" mat), there are a few ways to respond. If you're in a big hurry, you can ignore the problem, step over the bird, and deal with it when you get back. Or you can pick up the bird and put it in the garbage.
Or you can bury the bird.
I was in a hurry, so I decided to "bury" the bird in a pile of grass clippings. When you pick up a bird you realize that birds are light for flight, that their heads are tiny and almost unnecessary, and that they're mostly feathers and whatever holds the feathers together. Thinking about this bird as I carried it over to its grass-clipping cemetery, I imagined what it must have been for the bird earlier in the morning...
What a wonderful day for soaring! I'm flying along at thirty miles an hour or so, everything's great, and I see a clear path through that house in front of me. I can even see blue sky on the other side!
Ten milliseconds later and I hit something. I don't know what it was. Now I'm being buried in grass clippings! What did I do wrong? Should I have know better? How can this be fair? What did I hit anyway? Or did it hit me? Whatever it was, I didn't see it!
When I was about thirty, I first heard the term "window of opportunity." It was used in the sense of getting a product out to market before that window of opportunity was shut by the introduction of a competing product. It's a marketer's way of saying that there really is a time for every purpose under Heaven.
As I've lived my own life, I've become much more aware of windows opening and shutting as people grow and mature, come and go, and live and die. This awareness comes mainly with experience, and if you're lucky, gives you the wisdom to identify windows that are opening and shutting in your own life and in the lives of others. When you don't see these windows, too often you'll miss them completely, or try to go through them when they are already shut. If you're aware, and wary, you'll try to go through the windows at the proper times, not too early and not too late. Sometimes you'll just miss a window, or barely make it through. That's life.
For the Christian, there's a particular spiritual window of opportunity that once open, lasts forever, but opens only if you believe. Experience doesn't help so much here. To believe, you can be old or young. Without belief, you, or me, or anyone, can be flying along in life, enjoying a nice summer day, when eventually and suddenly – click-thud-shudder! - we hit a window that had seemed so easy to fly right through. The collision's shuddering pain may be lethal, but usually it's not.
If we continue to live, we may curse the window, or simply shake our head, gather our senses, and walk away. Or we may vow to avoid windows forever. Hopefully, after enough collisions, we'll come to realize that there's a window that needs permanent opening. We'll realize that like a bird that is light for flight, we are made to fly through windows too. We'll realize that like a bird, sometimes our heads are tiny and almost (although not completely) unnecessary. And we'll realize that like birds who are mostly feathers and whatever holds them together; we are all made of spiritual stuff and whatever holds our spirits together.
Stew
P.S. One way to keep birds from flying into windows is to put objects on the windows so that birds can make out the window pane. For spiritually shut windows, putting a cross on the window sometimes does the trick.
To respond to this message, email Stew at stewka@comcast.net.
