"Dad," my son Elliot said to me, a little breathlessly. "Do you know what I just saw?"
"A bedroom that needs cleaning," I said, I am afraid with just a bit of sarcasm in my voice.
"No," he said. "I just saw a hummingbird! It was flying near the deck."
"Oh," I said, feeling a little guilty. I've been busy enough that I didn't remember my little snow birds. While I had forgotten them, they clearly hadn't forgotten the feeders I usually had up beside our home.
With that unintended encouragement, I went digging in my closet to find our hummingbird feeders. Then, I made nectar for them.
It isn't much. It is just water and sugar. Some people add red food coloring, but I never do.
I mixed the sugar with the water and eyed the cloudy mixture and the sugar slowly settling on the bottom. It looked for all the world like a newly shaken snow globe, only without any sort of pretty scene in the bottom.
I put the container in the microwave and heated it for a few minutes, then took it out and stirred it again. The cloudiness vanished as the sugar dissolved in the heated water -- a perfect super-saturated sugary mixture. At last the nectar was ready for the tiny visitors from the south.
As I poured the liquid into the bird feeders I thought of my own life. All too often it has been so focused on itself that there was little room for anything else. It takes just as much time and effort to live a selfish, self-centered life, but it certainly isn't very satisfying.
I know that Jesus calls me to something more. He calls me to a life filled up with the Love of God. Honestly, when I fill my life up with all sorts of other things, there isn't room for much else -- sort of like the water before it was heated. When I empty myself of all these things and allow God to work His will, everything changes.
Like when the water is heated and lets more sugar dissolve suddenly, there is room for me to be saturated with my Heavenly Father and His love.
It feels as though this is a big problem in our world. Those who call themselves Christians are better at arguing than they are at loving. They are better at analyzing other's flavor than they are at being salt. They are better at cursing the darkness than at being light.
I pray that this would change. I pray that God's people would be salt and light. Most of all, I pray that we would allow God to heat us and purify us until we are saturated, no, super-saturated with His wondrous love.
