It was a three bedroom apartment in Chennai in South India. Our boys were ten and four and the house was filled with colorful artwork, toys in all sizes and shapes, mainly lots of bats and balls of all types. Our little balcony boasted of a bird cage with colorful love birds, a gift from friends. We also took pride in our little balcony garden. Mike and Meshu enjoyed seeing caterpillars turn into pupa and then fly away as bright butterflies.

Learn from the birds

On one particular morning, I woke up with a heavy heart. I had slept little that night and felt very tired and worn out. I sat with my cup of coffee in the cane chair as the birds chirped away. I flipped in my Bible to the verse where Jesus asks us to ‘Look at the birds.’

“Look at the birds of the air: they do not sow or reap or store away in barns and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more than they?”-Matthew 6:26 NIV

These words from Jesus that we should not worry made me sit up. I wrote out the verse and stuck it on our bird cage.

Learn from the flowers

The flowers in a glass jar on our coffee table looked gorgeous and brightened the whole room. I knew they would last not more than a week but they seemed to be doing their very best at what they were called to do! Reading further on in the same passage I stopped at verse 28. 

“Why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his glory was dressed like one of these.”-Matthew 6:28-29 NIV

I cut out a circular card, wrote out the verses as reminders to me and put it under the jug of flowers on the table. 

Learn from children

As I prepared breakfast in the kitchen, Mike and Meshu, who had woken up, rushed up to me for a hug. Their joy and honesty, their passion for life and smiles were all I needed at the moment. I prayed for God to bless them as he blessed children in Mark 10:15.

“Anyone who will not enter the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it. And he (Jesus) took the children in his arms and blessed them.”-Mark 10:15-16 NIV

Twenty years have gone by, Mike is now a thirty year old and a father himself. Meshu works designing race cars in the UK. My husband just turned sixty. We have faced many challenges, joys and struggles along the way. We have moved jobs, moved across continents, grown to a family of six, faced questions, doubts and fears. The birds, flowers and little children have time and time again reminded me not to worry but to trust God.

May God help us start the New Year as free as the birds, as gorgeous as the flowers and in reckless abandon as little children trusting Him to provide and care for us.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Shoba Ranjitsingh is an architect, writer, a proud mother and an excited new grandmother who works in a Primary school in New Zealand. Shoba enjoys studying God’s word and her role as a STL at Bible Study Fellowship in NZ for 6 years has enabled her to now write and lead Women’s Bible Studies. Helping women study and enjoy God’s word as they embrace each season of life is her prayer as a writer. Long walks, cakes, hymns, coffee, books and quiet family evenings describe Shoba. Ranjit and Shoba live in Auckland.