a dirty God and a little bird

"Hey dad, something fell and I don't know what it is"
I had thought I heard a few noises in the chimney yesterday while I was studying.

Here is a maxium:
If you ignore "it", "it" just moves into your house.

I had to get Olivia off to school and I knew this was going to get messy so I pushed a chair up against the screen to keep my new b.f. (bird friend) from flying the coop and made it to the bus in time to flash my truck lights and stop the driver in the middle of the street. 
This was not in my schedule.

No problem.
Thankfully during a period of my life when I had been "dismissed" from college I worked at a pet store in the mall. I was the guy who would be called in to catch the parakeets that found their way into the clothing store and I would strut through the food court wearing a lab coat, carrying a 15 foot long net. Wonder I didn't get arrested. (see mom, those years weren't wasted)

I went to the basement and got my shop vac anticipating a dust storm. I couldn't find my kids' crab net so I grabbed a sheet to toss over the guy and started a conversation with him.
I didn't want to be abrupt.

As I  slid the screen over to one side it became immediately clear the bird did not read my script.
 He made bolted out opposite side of screen. Dang it. I instinctively pushed the grate back, but instead of containing him in the fireplace, I pinned him to the wall.

Now I'm worried I'm going to squish the little bugger.My original plan was to save the thing, not kill it.  I ever-so-carefully smother him in the sheet and he ducks out a corner and tries to go out the window behind my wife's antique bottle collection.
Bird is not squished, but a few of her treasures are shattered.
 
(cue chase music)
He flies up stairs.
I trap him in the curtain behind my wife's makeup table.
I carry him downstairs and he gets free...back at window
(crash)  another one bites the dust.
Trap him in the girls room.
Get a bit firmer (there are only so many bottles you know)

...and then

So the cool thing is that God was all in the mix of this.

I woke up with a burden for folks like this bird.

We were made to live free and unfettered but we got lost and followed a path that looked good but in the end was not where we were supposed to be.

Then God planted a garden in Eden, in the east. 

He put the Man he had just made in it.  

God made all kinds of trees grow from the ground,

 trees beautiful to look at and good to eat.

We were naked in the woods, didn't have to work, and lived face-to-face with God.

But we ran.

God chased after us time and time again. We made a bigger mess than fire place soot.  We broke his most precious treasure and still he chased us.
  

But it was our sins that did that to him,
    that ripped and tore and crushed him—our sins!
He took the punishment, and that made us whole.
    Through his bruises we get healed.
We’re all like sheep who’ve wandered off and gotten lost.
    We’ve all done our own thing, gone our own way.
And God has piled all our sins, everything we’ve done wrong,
    on him, on him.
                    Isaiah 53:5

We even broke his very heart.

"Jerusalem! Jerusalem! Murderer of prophets! 

Killer of the ones who brought you God's news!

 How often I've ached to embrace your children, 

the way a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you wouldn't let me."

Matthew 23:37

But nothing stopped him from getting us back. 
You see,  God got very dirty chasing us. 

Will you get very dirty chasing others so that they too, can be free?