{"id":994,"date":"2014-04-07T20:56:53","date_gmt":"2014-04-08T01:56:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/gazette\/2014\/04\/07\/140407-frontdoornest\/"},"modified":"2022-05-31T14:35:53","modified_gmt":"2022-05-31T19:35:53","slug":"140407-frontdoornest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/2014\/04\/07\/140407-frontdoornest\/","title":{"rendered":"Preaching to the birds"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"quote\" style=\"text-align: left;\">Everyone who hears these words of Mine and does not act on them, will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. The rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and slammed against that house; and it fell&#8211;and great was its fall.<br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: .9em;\"><em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.biblegateway.com\/passage\/?search=Matthew+7%3A26-27&amp;version=NASB\">Matthew 7:26-27<\/a> (NASB)<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"float: right; margin: 0 0 1em 24px; border: 1px solid #ccc;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/images\/miscphotos\/nest.jpg\" alt=\"Nest\">I suspect that most people who visit this blog are familiar with the preceding Bible verses, and their context, where Jesus warns against putting one&#8217;s trust into things without a firm foundation. He was, of course, not giving a lecture in architecture or civil engineering, and His intent was to address spiritual issues more than the mundane, practical things of life. But&#8230;that&#8217;s not to say that there are no practical implications to this parable.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s also quite possible to apply this principle to non-human undertakings, and if you substitute &#8220;bird&#8221; for &#8220;man,&#8221; and &#8220;front door wreath&#8221; for &#8220;sand,&#8221; and &#8220;West Texas winds&#8221; for &#8211; well, the parable <b>does<\/b> hit that one on the head &#8211; the logical conclusion might be this sad scene, which greeted us this afternoon after work.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"border: 1px solid #ccc;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/images\/miscphotos\/nestandeggs.jpg\" alt=\"Broken bird eggs on concrete\"><\/p>\n<p>We had not even noticed the nest in the wreath until a couple of days ago, and I hadn&#8217;t had a chance to see if there were eggs in yet (although I told Debbie that <i>surely<\/i> the birds hadn&#8217;t yet laid any). But, judging by the carnage on the concrete, there were at least five, and possibly six eggs of unknown avian origin. Very sad, but&#8230;really birds? What were you thinking?<\/p>\n<p>The nest is intact, and the wreath has been re-hung (and more securely), so we&#8217;ll see if the parents were sufficiently traumatized that they&#8217;ll give up on this location. But perhaps they&#8217;ll try again. After all&#8230;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.biblegateway.com\/passage\/?search=Matthew+6:25-27&amp;version=NASB\">Matthew 6:25-27<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Everyone who hears these words of Mine and does not act on them, will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. The rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and slammed against that house; and it fell&#8211;and great was its fall. Matthew 7:26-27 (NASB) I suspect that&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/2014\/04\/07\/140407-frontdoornest\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Preaching to the birds<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-994","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-faith","category-wildlife-birds","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/994","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=994"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/994\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10502,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/994\/revisions\/10502"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=994"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=994"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=994"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}