Out of the dirt

"feathers of various colors"

Ezekiel 17:3

Alright, now I have a sweet little lesson for you today. 

It's beautiful...

     it's delicate...

          it's colorful...

and you might find it disgusting. 

Consider yourself warned. 

I was vacuuming today, and I reached the wand under my desk to suck up the ball of dust that had collected in the corner, behind the leg of my desk. 

Well first, maybe you should know that I have a lovely little rolltop desk, on the top of which is all manner of collectibles.

This is a picture of my desk a few years ago.  Quite a few, actually.  I don't even own that computer anymore.  And we don't own that phone.  And I've cleaned that mess of clutter off of the desk.  But you see those books, and that delightful little lamp on the top?  Those things aren't there anymore.  Now I have interesting rocks and stones and sticks and dried flowers.  Little pieces of nature that I've picked up, or that my kids have picked up for me. 

And there's also a tiny vase, about four inches tall.  I bought it last year, in Dallas, when we were visiting my in-laws in Texas.  It's just perfect for one small flower.  But when it's not holding one small flower, it's holding a collection (5 or 6) of feathers.

They are unusual feathers, all of them.  Not just a sparrow feather or a crow feather (no offense to them) but brightly colored or patterned in some way. 

Two of them I found in the backyard ~ the ones on the left, with the green on them.  They came from the wild parrots that come around every summer.   The one on the top left ~ the grey with the white edge?  I don't know where that came from, but I liked the contrast.  The other four are all from peafowl.  The zig-zaggy one from a peahen, and the other three, obviously, from a peacock.

Okay, now focus on those two little peacock feathers.  They are mostly grey, but the tips of them turn to that beautiful blue green, but without the ostentatious flash of a peacock's outer feathers.  They catch the light and the colors get even brighter when the sun is on them just right. 

I vacuumed up those two lovely, delicate, fragile feathers today. 

The ceiling fan must have blown them off of my desk, and as I realized what I had done, I bent down and looked into the clear canister on my vacuum and there they were.   Surrounded by dust and lint and cat hair and dog hair and probably my hair.   Ick.

I sat there looking at the striking blue green, in the midst of all that brown and grey, and tried to decide if I wanted them back badly enough to sift through it all. 

And I decided I did.  So I removed the canister from the vacuum cleaner and took it outside to the trash, where I carefully dumped enough dust and dirt so that I could grab the feathers.  Then I gently wiped them off, and blew on them to rid them of any remaining dust. 

And I thought about how much God loves us, and what He did, and does for us.  I thought about how our sin sullies us, and how our faith in Him cleans and purifies us. 

We are beautiful.  We are delicate.  And we are living lives of filth and muck until we are raised to new life in Him.

And we are totally worth it to Him.

~ "He brought me up out of a horrible pit,

out of the miry clay,

and set my feet upon a rock,

And established my steps" ~

Psalm 40:2

~