Christians Who Soar Like Eagles in the Open Sky

When an eagle’s beak and talons grow dull, it tears them all away itself on the rocky crags, and only after enduring a season in which it can neither eat nor fly does it rise higher into the open sky on a new beak and new talons. A young eagle, too, is able to fly only after a long training in which its mother drops it from the nest and catches it again, over and over.

This is the path a Christian must walk. Only with the resolve to cast off falsehood, hypocrisy and bad habits can a person stand in a renewed faith, and suffering is the hand of God letting go and catching again and again, to make his people strong. So it was with Moses: only after forty years as a prince and forty more as a shepherd in the wilderness did he come to see his own helplessness and become a leader who obeyed.

The story of Abraham, standing before the command to offer up Isaac, points to the same conclusion. True faith does not hold on to its own righteousness and its own zeal but entrusts everything wholly to God. Christians who lay aside the old things they once relied on in the world and gain new strength through patience come to know the freedom and peace of an eagle soaring through the open sky.