It’s late Spring here, and there is new life everywhere. There are trees in our backyard that only 2 months ago had lost all their leaves, you would have sworn they were dead, and now they are covered in fresh new green growth and fruit. Animals and insects are out and about everywhere, and the air is filled with the chirping of baby birds. Our house seems to be surrounded by birds nests, full of little baby birds of all types.

One nest in particular, along our driveway, is a tiny nest, maybe only 5cm across, and is home to some kind of small “finch” type of bird and it’s three babies. We found it before the eggs even hatched, and since that time have checked on it every few days, carefully peering through the branches to see it’s progress. One day there were three tiny little babies in there, and over the last couple of weeks we’ve watched them get bigger and bigger, as the mum goes out and gets them food.

But yesterday morning when we went to take a look at the nest, to our surprise it was missing. And then upon closer inspection we found it, upturned and fallen down into the lower parts of the bush. Looking at the surroundings, a whole bunch of shrub branches directly below the nest have been crushed, snapped, and pushed over, and it seems pretty obvious that some animal, almost certainly someone’s cat, has attacked the nest and devoured the growing babies. Who knows if mum met a similar fate, or if she got away. I don’t know if birds feel sorrow like we do, but it feels sad to think she may still be around, mourning that loss.

Of course, this is nothing new. Every day, death and killing happens millions of times around the world, as it has every day for thousand of years. It’s a sad fact that we live in a broken world, where living things kill and eat each other to survive, or sometimes even just kill for other reasons. Death is a part of life, and will be until all things are made right again.

But this incident does remind me that death can come so quickly, and is rarely expected. I still remember waking up one morning as a 14 year old boy to find my father had died. It was of course the last thing I was expecting, and it changed my life in ways I still don’t fully understand.

Life is precious, and fragile. Remember that the people around you can be here one day and gone the next. Don’t put off anything you can do for them today.

The other day I saw a post on Facebook, quoting Sigmund Freud, which goes something along the lines of:

Religion belonged to the infancy of the human race; it had been a necessary stage in the transition from childhood to maturity. It had promoted ethical values which were essential to society. Now that humanity has come of age, however, it should be left behind.

Several people commented on this post, approving it, claiming it was such an enlightened statement, and how dumb you must be if you don’t agree with it.

But one line in particular from the quote made me almost laugh out loud when I read it: Now that humanity has come of age, however…

Come of age!? On basis does anyone think that we’ve “come of age”? Most generations tend to think that they’ve come of age. They’re much smarter and more enlightened than previous generations. They know so much more. They’ve learnt from the mistakes of their predecessors. They’ve made significant advancements into science and the understanding of life and the universe.

But we’re deceiving ourselves if we think we’ve “come of age”. We still don’t know much about the universe and what goes on around us. We still hurt each other, kill each other, and do things we don’t understand. What we want to do, we don’t do. And what we don’t want to do, we keep on doing.

No matter what achievements or advancements we think we make in unlocking the mysteries of life, usually each discovery produces a bunch of more unanswered questions. Rather than pride ourselves on our coming of age, we should humble ourselves and realise we don’t know all that much really, we often get it wrong, and our understanding of things doesn’t even come close to the infinite wisdom of the creator and designer of all that’s around us.

Life’s a great adventure! Let’s marvel at it, even the things we don’t understand, but let’s never try and claim we know how it all works.