House Martins show is there is a time for everything
Pamela Scott DCS
In mid-June I saw the first House Martins in our area. They may well have been here before, but I hadn’t seen them. It is quite late for them to arrive in Scotland, with experts saying they arrive in April or May. It was still very warm and dry, and I was aware of them darting about under the trees, feeding on the tiny flies there. For at least five years now we have had a pair build a nest under the eaves of our house. After they are finished with it, they always break it down leaving just a small amount of mud on the wall. This year I noticed that they weren’t building, instead they were just flying around under the trees feeding furiously.
Then, about a week ago, the rain came, and boy did it pour. I didn’t go out for two days but when I did, I saw a completed nest exactly where the others had been, with two House Martins dashing in and out with feathers to line the nest. For about ten days they had spent the time feeding but with two days of rain, which provided all the mud they would need, they built a home. The time and the conditions were exactly right for the building of a nest and they used it.
On seeing this, it got me thinking about how many times we force things to happen. We try so many different ways, but none of them seem to be right. To me watching the House Martins I was thinking the first thing I would have done was build a home, but what I didn’t realise was the conditions just weren’t right. Their nests are made of mud, which was hard to find in the dry warm season we had experienced, but as soon as it started raining, they were off. They knew that they would find lots of mud and they weren’t going to waste the time. They also realised that they wouldn’t use nearly as much energy as if they had tried when the mud was not there.
We have lots to learn from the House Martins, not least knowing when it is right to do something. In Ecclesiastes 3 it is written that, ‘There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven.’
It would do us good to remember this and not use energy doing something that God doesn’t want us to do yet.
Amen