To Nest and to Nestle

After a long day, isn’t it wonderful to come home and flop into your favorite chair? If it has been your chair long enough then it probably feels like it has been molded to your exact measurements. If it is the soft, overstuffed sort then you can literally nestle into it. Not surprisingly, the word nestle shares its root with the word nest. The literal meaning of nest is a place to sit down. The connotation of the word nestle is of fitting comfortably or being drawn close. This seems to come from the less common use of nest to denote something that fits neatly inside a larger object, such as those popular Russian dolls. What confuses me is how this idea came to be since it certainly doesn’t seem to have a basis in nature.

Nearly every bird builds a new nest every breeding season, very few birds will reuse a nest; even those birds that lay a second clutch of eggs will typically do it in a new nest. The only birds that consistently return to a previously build nest are larger birds. Some birds of prey will add to a nest each year. Ospreys and Bald Eagles do this, sometimes to the point that the tree supporting it can no longer support the weight and it collapses! Some owls are notorious for not ever building nests but instead using the sturdier nests built by others the previous season. Herons are colonial nesters, so they return annually to what is called a rookery, where there are multiple nests (sometimes finding that a Great Horned Owl has taken up residence!)

None of these structures are particularly comfortable. That is, at least not until an adult bird literally feathers the nest with downy feathers plucked from itself and then settles down first on the eggs and later the nestlings. Perhaps this is the very image that brought forth the term nestle. Birds give us a great example of how to cope with change. In a way, each spring presents a whole new world to a bird, yet they find a way to make a new home and to nestle their young safely. Compare this to 2 Corinthians 5:17, “So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old is passed away; see, everything has become new!” When God brings change into our lives it is radical, hardly bringing the idea of nestling to mind!

None of these structures are particularly comfortable. That is, at least not until an adult bird literally feathers the nest with downy feathers plucked from itself and then settles down first on the eggs and later the nestlings. Perhaps this is the very image that brought forth the term nestle. Birds give us a great example of how to cope with change. In a way, each spring presents a whole new world to a bird, yet they find a way to make a new home and to nestle their young safely. Compare this to 2 Corinthians 5:17, “So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old is passed away; see, everything has become new!” When God brings change into our lives it is radical, hardly bringing the idea of nestling to mind!