What used to be a small house, the interior now exposed, the red brick crumbling, the ground colonised by buddleia, the wooden lintel above the door bleached, cracked, but still holding. Who used to live here? How long ago? What was their story. The ruin sits beside a large busy roundabout, in downtown Aberdeen, part of the city now run down by neglect and a world that has moved on, a site that is apparently still unattractive to investors, space that's just too much hassle to reclaim, repair and restore.
Except. Except above the lintel, to the left of the surviving granite facia, there is a small square hole. That's where two sparrows are building their nest. I watched them come and go. Aye, in a broken world, "even the sparrow finds a home." (Psalm 84.3)
And at that moment, something inside nudged me towards hope. You know those moments when you breathe deeply, look at the blue sky, and decide yet again not to give in to despair? And like that other poem by the Psalmist extraordinaire, we hear that still small voice, the birth of defiance which is the backbone of trust, "Why are you cast down and sick to your heart's core? Hope in God, for I shall yet praise him!"
Today, in the light of a ruin in havbited by sparrows, I hope in God for the return of peace and safety for the people of Ukraine, Gaza and Israel, and the other troubled places of our fractured planet. May those who have to flee find a home and a welcome in the human family where borders are not walls, but lines of safety and help.
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