Time to Fly

It’s one thing knowing that you should let go of something or someone, but it’s another thing actually doing it. As human beings, most of us will resist change because we know it can be painful and unfamiliar. Father will prod us gently in the right direction, but after a while, if we still resist the change that he knows is in our best interest, He moves to the next phase of His plan. I call it ‘Time to Fly’!

Deuteronomy 32:11 says, “As an eagle stirs up its nest, hovers over its young, spreading out its wings, taking them up and carrying them on its wings, so the Lord alone led him.” I always thought this was such a lovely, comforting scripture until I studied it and found something very different to what I thought it meant!

The eagle that is referred to in this scripture is most likely the Mediterranean Eagle, which is common to Palestine. When a baby Mediterranean eagle fledges (loses its fluffy baby down and grows flying feathers) one of its parents will hover over the nest and flap its wings, and the baby eagle (who learns through imprinting) mimics the parents and flaps its newly feathered wings. The wind that the parent’s wings make, together with its own clumsy flapping motion, causes the baby to rise slightly above the nest. These are its first attempts at flying – just inches above the floor of the nest, usually at about 8-10 weeks old. This happens many times, and is the way the parents prepare their baby eagle for flying.

When the baby is strong enough, the mother eagle starts walking around inside the nest, breaking the twigs and turning over the leaves. The nest, which had been so safe, warm, and comfortable, is no longer that way; wind blows through the holes in the nest, and sticks begin to poke into the bird’s side. The mother will literally tear up the nest to force the baby to leave it. Sometimes this will be enough to encourage the baby to leave the nest and, on occasion, it might even fall through a hole in the nest. However, if the baby is reluctant to leave the nest, the mother moves to the next phase of her parenting plan.

She hovers over her young baby, flapping her wings just over the baby’s head for several seconds, then, after a short rest, she flaps her wings again, then rests. The little bird runs back and forth inside the nest, trying to escape the reach of his mother’s powerful wings, and, after a long while of running around inside this uncomfortable nest, trying to avoid the mother’s huge wings, the baby scurries up one of her wings and onto the back of her neck. That’s just what the mother wants!

She takes off immediately in flight, flying high into the sky, and then darts out from underneath her baby, leaving him stranded in mid-air. The little bird begins to flap his wings as hard as he can, but his wings will not hold him up, and he falls towards the ground. Just when he is about to hit the ground, the mother flies underneath her baby and carries it up, up into the sky again. When the baby has recovered a little, she darts out from underneath him again. His little wings are still unable to hold him up, but they function better than they did the first time.

Time after time, this mother will catch her baby, take him high into the air and then drop him again, until finally he learns to stretch those God-given wings and soar through the sky, the way the Lord meant an eagle to.

The process of tearing the nest apart may seem cruel to someone who doesn’t understand why the mother eagle is doing it. But, in actual fact, it is the greatest act of kindness and good parenting if you’re an eagle! If the parents let the baby stay in the nest, not only would it not learn to fly, but it would also not be able to hunt and feed itself or find a mate and have its own babies, and it would die a prolonged and terrible death from starvation or exposure.

Father God knows that, in order for us to ‘fly’, we must get out of the comfortable nests that we have got so used to, with all the things around us that we think we need and that we have trained ourselves to rely on. We have to learn to let go in order to move on and live the extraordinary life that He has planned for us.

I hope you have a clear understanding by now of the fact that, in order to move on, we have to learn how to let go of the former things so that we can fully embrace the wonderful new thing that He has for us. Father only ever asks us to let go of something in order to give us something better. He is so kind!  He is not a nasty, mean old man with a big stick waiting to whack us on the head when we do something wrong. He leads us and guides us so gently, but firmly, from glory to glory (2 Corinthians 3:18).

It’s often the case, just as it was with the baby eagle (and with my rugs!) that Father God has to take something away, in order to give us something new. It’s a divine exchange, and it involves trust on our part because we don’t know what we’re going to receive until we’ve let go of what we have now.

Did you know that the eagle is the only bird which flies directly into a thunderstorm? Other birds fly away from a thunderstorm seeking refuge or shelter in the safety of a barn or their nest, but eagles fly directly into the thunder clouds. Why is that? It’s because the turbulent winds cause the eagle to fly higher, giving him a better view, allowing him to use less effort and helping him to fly faster.

So if you feel like your nest is being picked to pieces or that, like the baby eagle, you find yourself free-falling at a rapid pace, remember that, before you can fly, you must fall.

          Let go of the nest, stop clinging to what you have known, and let yourself fall; watch your heavenly Father pick you up and carry you higher and higher up into the clouds above. You WILL get through this time, your wings will strengthen and grow, and one day, you will find yourself flying straight into the storm clouds of life, confident in your ability to fly higher and further than ever before.

          “Those who wait on the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles” (Isaiah 40:31, NKJV)

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Until next time ….

If you are going through a difficult time, consider the possibility that it may be the kindness of God “breaking your nest apart” so that you can grow and soar to greater heights with Him.