The Pastor’s Piece – August 17, 2024

By: Kevin Cernek – Chaplain

FCFI

August 18, 2024

A joke I heard this week: The wedding day was fast approaching. Everything was ready, and nothing could dampen the bride’s excitement, not even her parents’ nasty divorce.

Her mother finally found the perfect dress to wear and would be the best-dressed mother of the bride – ever!  A week later, the bride-to-be was horrified to learn her new young stepmother had purchased the same dress. She asked her to exchange it, but she refused, “Absolutely not! I’m going to wear this dress. I’ll look like a million bucks in it!”

She told her mother, who graciously replied, “Never mind, dear. I’ll get another dress, after all it’s your special day, not ours.” Two weeks later, another dress was finally found. When they stopped for lunch, the bride-to-be asked her mother, “What are you going to do with the first dress? Are you going to return it? You don’t have any place to wear it.”

Her mom grinned and replied, “Of course, I do, dear. I’m wearing it to the rehearsal dinner.”

Every year at our church we have a friendly garden competition among the regulars. If someone has a fruit or vegetable from their garden they want to enter, they either bring the actual item or they present a picture and we recognize them for their efforts. It is a lot of fun. People also bring their excess produce and place it outside the front door and on Sunday we all get to help ourselves to the delectable items of our choice. So far this year, the longest string bean entered in the contest is 29 and 3/4 inches long and according to the gardener, every bite of it was delicious. I have a watermelon patch again this year. I had some difficulty getting them started. I had to replant the seeds three times before any of them would grow. I now have several fair-sized melons, but I’m not sure they have enough season left to grow to award-winning proportions. Even so, it’s been a lot of fun. I can imagine the sweet taste when we finally get to cut one open. I look at the soil and am amazed that something as gritty and grimy as that soil is, could produce something as sweet as watermelon. Of course, we know that’s how God designed it.

On another note, last spring early on, a Cardinal came knocking on our window. He was a male all decked out in red with beautiful head feathers. He landed on a bush outside the garage window and all day long he pecked at the glass. After trying a couple of remedies to discourage him, I finally blacked out the window from the inside. He then moved to the next window, where I did the same. This continued until I had all the garage windows blacked out. Eventually he moved on.

Then the barn swallows came. It was a wet spring and they had no trouble finding mud to build their nests. One couple decided the best place for a home was over our back door on the patio. They vigorously started their nest building, pasting big globs of mud over the door, but were greatly discouraged by us. I figure they’re called barn swallows for a reason. They’re barn swallows – not patio swallows. They need to find a place in the barn to build. My wife and I tried blocking their access over the door, which worked fairly well after a couple of attempts. When the birds, and us humans, could no longer use the door, they moved on to the window next to the door. They were flying to the spot, one after the other, carrying beaks full of mud and packing it on the sill over the window. So we blocked that too.

In case you’re wondering if I’m a bird hater the answer is no. But I do understand there’s a reason the saying: “Dirty bird” came into existence. No matter how pretty a bird may be, they make a mess. We’ve had barn swallows over the door before. When the babies hatch, they poop over the edge and make a mess on the patio below. They need to be in the barn – which is where these insistent swallows finally ended up.

After we had successfully deterred the cardinal and the swallows, to our dismay, a couple weeks ago, a female cardinal showed up at our front door. We have floor-length windows on either side of the front door. She started pecking the window on one side of the door so we took action. Then she moved to the other side, then onto the kitchen windows, until finally she left. My wife deterred her by taping a family picture of us on the inside of the window. Apparently our portrait was enough to scare the bird away. We still see her flying around the yard, along with the male. Apparently they found a better piece of real estate to build on. We now live in peace and quiet. I pray the birds are safe in their nests.

“Look at the birds of the air, for they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you, by being anxious, can add one cubit to his span of life?” (Matthew 6:26-27).

(Kevin Cernek is Lead Pastor of Martintown Community Church in Martintown, Wisconsin).