Fledglings

There are parrot nests in the tall eucalyptus trees on the street down from my house in Mexico. They are more like parrot apartments, because several couples seem to be flying in and out of different doorways of the same giant nests. I watch them add twigs when I take walks and sometimes catch the whole family taking off when the babies are grown.

This week Philip drove from Chicago to Colorado to see Cailey. He’s a good driver, but the thought of him driving sixteen hours, late into the night, by himself, weighed on me throughout the day. Couldn’t help it. I called him every couple of hours, when he pulled into rest stops, to check if he was alert. He was, of course. And at the end of the week, he takes another long drive by himself to go back to college. And Elai and Mikael are getting seriously serious, and I think of how young and unprepared they are for a future together. I was 29 when I got married, therefore so much more prepared. The one most unprepared for the kids leaving the nest might just be mom.

Makes me think of how in Scripture God gathered people in families and then let the children go. I think of Jacob leaving home to seek his fortune (I wonder how old he was). I think of how God spoke to three generations of forefathers (Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob), showing up at dinnertime and at the top of ladders, and then was silent for 400 years while his children turned into slaves in a foreign land. Then I think of Moses holding on to his belief in God while he grew up as an Egyptian prince, then leaving that all behind to live as a shepherd in the desert, and then coming back to confront Pharaoh at 80 years old (think of the 80 year olds you know). God seems to take so much set up time for a lightning drama.

After Moses, the Hebrews kept looking back to those glory days, but for the most part, God was silent, and they had to figure things out for themselves. I think of Jesus “wasting” thirty years to acculturate as a Jew and then spending only three lightning years with his disciples. And if you think about that, God had already invested thousands of years preparing a way for his son to come to earth “in the fullness of time.” He had set up a very specific culture for Jesus to fit into when he “pitched his tent among us" so that he could live incognito for thirty years before his public ministry began and then be recognized as Messiah when the time was right. So much process. So much time. So much preparation for a short, powerful drama.

The days since Christ seem to follow this same pattern. God lived among us for a short time with stunning miracles and revolutionary teaching, which birthed the first congregations of His followers. He passed his mantle on to his disciples and left them so that the Spirit could carry on in all of us now. And since then, he’s been visible to the world only through us, His children. We are his hands and feet and voice. I think we wish He’d do more, take on more of the responsibility, but he refuses. He trusts us.

As Robert and I work with young churches and church planters, this is perhaps the biggest difference between our work and God’s that we see. We trust His children less than He does. He lets go so soon. He trusts so much. When Paul started a church in new culture (Gentile), he stayed for such a short time (months, only) and left so little behind. He never took on its local leadership and never left behind Jewish culture or Jewish sets of rules. He let them find their own way and make their own mistakes and he praised and rebuked as things came up, in letters.

As it’s my job to do now. What a strange transition. From being mom to being peer with no more authority than what love and experience gives you. Our all-powerful God and Father worked hard at this, letting us go and calling us back with no more authority than love and experience gives him.