Caged!

Wow! A whole weekend with not a thing in the world scheduled for us to do! Ginny and I felt a free as birds.

Except…

We have this free bird; I mean a bird which cost us nothing.

Ha!

Remember back on August 12^th (see blog archives) when my daughter rescued a peach-faced lovebird from bluejays attacking it in her backyard? She gave the battered bird to us.

Free. No Strings Attached.

Well, I spent about $60 that day on accouterments for the free bird.

I named the bird Fancy after Fancy Feast Cat Food. But Ginny noted the bird’s propensity for hanging upside down from the roof of its cage like a bat in a cave, so she said the bird’s name came from its being nothing but a fancy yellow-feathered bat.

A few weeks later, we paid another $20 for books about raising birds.

We wanted to treat our free bird right.

Turns out that the cage I had bought was far too small. So today we spent our free day shopping for a larger cage. Spend another $70 for cage, birdseed, mirrors, etc.

Some free bird!

It gets more and more expensive to keep this fancy yellow bat.

Like buying a Barbie doll for your kid, the doll itself costs little but when you buy the gowns, car, dream house, accessories, etc., you’ve spent a fortune!

(An Aside: In the dark of the night, barefoot in your own home, when you step on a Barbie spike-heel shoe on the floor, it hurts worse than a Lego block! Guess how I know that?)

Anyhow, we brought the larger cage home.

It dominates our living room. Takes up more space than my recliner!

Now came time to move Fancy to its new home.

Terrified that we were Colonel Sanders minions from KFC in disguise, Fancy squawked and fluttered and snapped and struggled to escape being transferred to the new environment. We forced the poor defenseless, helpless (except for biting with pliers-like beak) little creature into the larger cage … and suddenly the bird thought it was in Heaven.

Now it has room to fly.

Now it has a birdbath.

Now it can fight not one but three mirrors!

In the new cage Fancy chirped and explored and sang more than at any time since the bluejays ripped off its tail feathers.

Makes me wonder about those times when I resist the Lord Christ with all my might as He forces me into a new environment? Could there be any parallel?

While Ginny attached shiny danglies to the new cage and fiddled with her bird, I fell asleep in my chair, pipe in hand, book open in my lap, coffee cup at hand, feet propped up, snoring away — Free as a bird.

But wait; there’s more to this Free As A Bird thing.

When I roused from my nap, I woke thinking about how much money we’d spent on this free bird and I remembered that Scripture which says, “If the Son shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed”.

But that’s a different sort of free:

Earlier this year I published a book called Strangers On The Earth. One of the chapters is a brief profile of Madam Jeanne Marie Guyon, a wealthy French aristocrat who lived as a Christian in the court of King Louis XIV — reputed to be the most corrupt, lascivious, degraded royal court in French history.

She taught Bible studies, held prayer meetings and counseling sessions for the King’s courtesans and court playmates.

Madame Guyon became noted as a leading figure in a Christian movement called Quiteism. Essentially, she recognized that God is all; nothing else counts. She felt so identified with His will and His love that no lesser thing deserved her attention. A person in love thinks about the Beloved all the time, no matter what else is going on.

King Louis XIV demanded that Madame Guyon give her 12-year-old daughter in marriage to the Marquis of Chanvalon, an old rake to whom the king owed money; the girl's estates would pay off the King's debt.

Madame Guyon would not consent to the marriage.

The King caged her in the Bastille — reputed to be the worst prison on earth.

Madam Guyon believed that no second causes exist, that everything which comes into our lives comes directly from the hand of a loving God.

She endured years of torture and solitary confinement — yet she was free, free as a bird.

Here is a poem she wrote while caged in the Bastille:

A little bird I am,
Shut from the fields of air;
And in my cage I sit and sing
To Him who place me there;
Well pleased a prisoner to be,
Because, my God, it pleases Thee.

My cage confines me round;
Abroad I cannot fly;
But though my wing is closely bound,
My heart's at liberty.
My prison walls can not control
The flight, the freedom of my soul.

Oh, it is good to soar
These bolts and bars above,
To Him whose purpose I adore,
Whose providence I love:
And in thy mighty will to find
The joy, the freedom of the mind.