Today I tried not to get the baby finches wet when I watered the basket, but they got a little wet anyway. The added wetness makes it easier to see their little developing wings. You can easily find them by their four little yellow beaks. This is Day 7 of their little lives, and may be the last photo for a couple of days as we may head out camping for the weekend. So maybe by Monday there will be some more dramatic changes in their lives.
It seems life is full of dramatic changes. If not our own lives, then we seem always to know someone dealing with crisis. Such is the state of our fallen world. It is quiet on our cancer front at the moment, but cancer is ravishing others. Daily we pray for Natasha, Donna, Silvano, Gary, Russ, Karina, Rachel, and Linda in their cancer fights. We also pray for three families who lost young daughters within the last year. There is plenty of heart-break here. That's what makes these words from Romans 8 so precious:
I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.
We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what he already has? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.
In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express. And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints in accordance with God's will.
And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified.
What, then, shall we say in response to this? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?
~Romans 8:18-32
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