Quiet Strength in Barren Places

Cape Barren Goose

I saw them in the botanic garden, grazing slowly on the open grass. At first they looked like ordinary geese, until I noticed their colour — soft grey scattered with darker spots, pink legs with black feet, like they had been dipped in paint, and the oddest thing of all: a lime-green patch above the beak.

They were Cape Barren Geese, a bird with a story.

Long ago, sailors landed on a windswept island off Tasmania and gave the place a name: Cape Barren. It was a harsh land, treeless and rough, and yet here was this goose — not bright or showy, but sturdy and strange, living on coarse grass no one else wanted. The sailors gave it the name of the place, and for years people thought the goose was rare, even fragile.

But the truth was different. The Cape Barren Goose was resilient. It needed little water. It endured on barren land. And though its numbers once fell, with time and care it returned, walking calmly in gardens and sanctuaries today — a bird of quiet strength.

As I watched them, I thought of people. The ones who grow up in patched houses with little more than a quiet wish in their heart. The ones named or judged by others, sometimes seen as fragile, but who carry a strength that isn’t loud or showy. The kind of strength that endures storms, that finds life in places others would call barren.

It reminded me of the story I have lived and written — Woven by Love was full of such people. My mother. My brother. Even myself. Misunderstood, sometimes overlooked, yet carried by a God who sees what the world does not.

The Cape Barren Goose is not a symbol of fragility after all. It is a reminder that resilience can be quiet, that strength can be gentle, and that grace often grows in places no one expects.

So I left the garden that day with a picture in my heart: a goose grazing in silence, living proof that beauty and endurance are not always loud. Sometimes they are grey and spotted, pink-legged and a little odd, but steadfast all the same.

And I whispered, Thank You, Lord, for showing me that strength is not always loud, and that in barren places, You are the One who sustains.