46 degrees Clear Calm
The first rays of the morning sun play with the black and white squares on the checkerboard of the loon's back.
One loon on the nest and the other loon slowly cruising through wisps of fog on a surface of glass a little further out on the lake on a stunning spring morning.
Ahhhh, the beauty of a quiet spring morning in Minnesota.
These are the days that we wait all winter for. In the depths of the dark and cold and snow of winter, we dream of the peace of an early spring day in Minnesota with the birds in full song proclaiming the start of a new day. A day filled with hope and promise.
It was two weeks ago this morning that the loons laid their first egg!
Can it be?
Two weeks?!
Where has the time gone? The loons are already halfway to the finish line with their eggs. Will their dedication and patience pay off with a new generation of chicks? With new LIFE?!
Only time will tell. But that is the hope and promise, that at the end of these four weeks they will be rewarded with two new chicks. The indescribably cute and adorable bundles of black down.
One can only imagine what is going on inside that egg right now. The miracle of the creation of life. Of something out of nothing.
What mind can even begin to wrap itself around something so wondrous?
Where just two short weeks ago there was only an egg shell wrapped around an egg white cradling an egg yolk. Now there are blood vessels. A heart that is already pumping. The forming of eyes. And a head. And a beak and a brain and a body.
Where is the world's brightest scientist who could come close to creating something even a fraction this amazing? Where is the world's smartest philosopher who can comprehend what is even taking place inside this egg? Who can explain LIFE? Where is the world's greatest pastor who can fully explain how Someone does this?
Our minds are unable to even begin to fully comprehend what is happening inside that egg.
Yet most of the time we never give it a second thought. We never stop to marvel at the wonder of it all because it is a miracle that is so common. It is a miracle that is happening in thousands of loon nests all over the northern reaches of the world right now.
And that is just with the loons! Not to speak of all the other birds. And all the other animals where the miracle of the creation of new life is happening all around us.
And exactly because it is so common, we forget that life is truly a miracle. A gift. A wonderful inheritance.
Maybe we don't think about it because it is too hard. It is too hard to wrap our minds around something so wonderful. It hurts our head to think of something so big and so marvelous and so magnificent. How can such a miracle be happening in every direction we look? That is, when we even stop to look .... and to wonder.
So we don't even stop to think of it most of the time.
But that doesn't mean that it isn't happening. Happening all around us.
And all we can do is to stop and say "Thanks" this morning for this wonderful gift of life. And for the promise of a new day.