As I was driving to work this week, I passed a flock of birds. They were flying in one direction, then turned altogether, then turned again, until it became apparent that they were flying around in big circles above the turnpike. My first thought was that birds are dumb and they were sure wasting a lot of energy flying around in circles instead of moving in the direction they were supposed to be migrating. Then the spirit reminded me of a commentary I read recently about Psalm 128 where it says "your wife will be like a fruitful vine within your house...". The author (Rachel Jankovic) talks about what it looks like for a wife to bear good fruit. She uses the illustration of an apple tree that produces so much good fruit that much of it falls to the ground and rots because there are not enough people around to gather it. She says this about our fruit:
"While it is on our branches, it is our life work. It is an offering to God, and we ought to care intensely about the quality of our fruit. But the branches are our responsibility; the ground is not." She then goes on to encourage us that we can be certain God will use all our fruit - even if it looks to us like it's just sitting on the ground rotting. "So throw it out there on the ground when you have no plan for its future.", she says. "Waste it."
By this point I had driven under the bird circle and could no longer see them flying around in my rearview mirror. I wasn't sure if they had moved on or not. And I was left with this thought: How arrogant I am to accuse those birds of wasting their energy - especially from my vantage point! I did not see what happened earlier to cause them to fly in that circle, and I can't seem them anymore to see what happened afterwards.
God gives me the energy I need each day. There are plenty of days I want more than He gives, and there are days when I feel I wasted my energy flying around in circles because there is still so much that needs to be done. But if God is directing my steps then the problem isn't the circles, the problem is my vantage point.
