Home alone
First day home and it felt like a battle against the ever-encroaching force of nature.
In our absence, several sparrows had built nests against the ventilation slabs of the house. The mosquito nets we had pasted over the opening became some sort of a safety net for the lumps of twigs and leaves. A friend had visited the house when we were away and she had removed one nest. I came home to find the remnants of other nests scattered all across the house. The bits that had fallen to the ground still contained the tiniest of bird eggs! A few were broken and the insides had become stuck to the ground. It took quite a few hours to clean up the mess.
As I write, one more nest needs to be cleared. For now it is hanging precariously above the kitchen door! (PS: This photo was taken shortly after LS got home.)
I was fairly amazed at how dirty the house became in just a month. Various animals had obviously taken over the place. Apart from the birds’ nests, I found a trail of lizard droppings in the kitchen, and an assortment of dead cockroaches, tiny scorpions and other unidentified bugs in LS’s room.
As I attacked the mess with Dettol and soap, I thought of what GK Chesterton had written.
“If you leave a thing alone you leave it to a torrent of change. If you leave a white post alone it will soon be a black post. If you particularly want it to be white you must be always painting it again; that is, you must be always having a revolution…”
When I first read this paragraph many months ago, I was struck by the truth they expressed. The passing of time in and of itself does not bring about positive change or progress, contrary to what some people think. In fact, the opposite is true. Leave a thing alone, and it is subjected to relentless forces of corrosion and decay. To merely maintain its current condition, much work and effort is needed. To make something better and brighter – now that requires a lot of work! Anyone who has tried to keep a house clean knows this to be true intuitively.
And of course I personally experienced the truth of this idea as I swept, cleaned and mopped the house ferociously.
Chesterton goes on to write:
“But this which is true even of inanimate things is in a quite special and terrible sense true of all human beings. An almost unnatural vigilance is really required of the citizen because of the horrible rapidity with which human institutions grow old.”
Indeed. The laws of nature often point to deep spiritual truth. If it takes so much labour just to keep a house clean, how much more serious and diligent should we be when it comes to keeping the spirit man pure and pleasing before God?
New life arrives...
There were bright sparks too, on this first day home. My favourite plant in our small garden has finally produced flowers! It was a pleasant surprise. A month ago, it showed no sign of flowering, and now it suddenly has.
Also, a neighbour’s pig seems to have given birth. The sow had been heavily pregnant for a while. Some weeks ago, we observed her pulling small branches, probably to prepare a comfortable home for herself and her piglets.
The landlord’s puppies have also grown bigger…
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