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Learning from Eagles

Deuteronomy 32:11

The mother eagle "Stirs up her nest," "flutters over her young," "spreads abroad her wings," and "bears them on her wings." Let us assume that we are watching this process, and the time is come when the young eagle must leave the nest and strike out on his own. Guess what! He does not want to do that. He is comfortable in this nest. And when he looks down from the dizzying heights of the mountain peak where the nest is, he is not even close to being ready to try any adventures or dangerous enterprises. So the mother eagle begins making things uncomfortable for him in the nest. She stirs it up. She tears up his soft bed. She breaks the twigs until the jagged ends stick out. In other words, she begins to make life very miserable for the baby in the place that once was so very safe.

Sometimes, stirring up the nest does not always cause the eaglet to leave the nest. So the mother eagle begins to flutter over her young, beating him up with her wings. These wings protected him at first, but now they have become his "enemy." Away from those terrible wings, the eaglet climbs to the side of the nest. Then, as the mother eagle spreads her wings broad, her baby hops on her back.

She soars high into the sky with the little one hanging on for dear life. High up above the clouds she goes. Then suddenly, without warning, she dives out from under the eaglet, leaving him hanging on nothing. He screams with fear as he tumbles; but instinctively his wings stretch out, and he begins to catch some air. Down, down, down he falls as his untried wings fail to hold him up. When it looks as though all hope is lost and he is about to crash on the rocks below, the mother eagle swoops under him and bears him up on her wings. Back to the heights of heaven they soar. Then she drops the bottom out from under him again. This time his wings begin to operate a little better, become a little stronger, until finally he learns how to catch the currents and soar by himself, no longer needing his mother to catch him from falling.

God is in the business of transforming us from flightlessness to faith. His children are eagles in the making

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