The eagle is a bird of extreme beauty. We admire its majesty and grace on wing. This beautiful creature can soar above the world’s problems and find freedom.
It’s no wonder the bald eagle is America’s national bird.
Yet an eagle can’t fly at birth. As it grows, it doesn’t even try. Its nest is too comfortable. Its parents have done their job too well, and the eaglet is content to snuggle with its nest mates and be fed by a larger hand.
They have to be forced from the nest. The commonly told tale is that the mother eagle removes feather after feather from the nest, until only prickly branches remain. As the thorns prod, and the eaglets become more and more uncomfortable, they eventually give in to what they are.
They take to the wing and fly.
Oh, not perfectly, at first. They have to be bailed out by a larger, more masterful flyer at first, but eventually they get the hang of it, and they begin to excel at what they’re good at: being eagles.
God gives his children thorns, too. Otherwise we would be content to snuggle in his arms and be fed by him a mouthful at a time. He wants us to leap into the world and soar above our problems.
2 Corinthians 12:7 gives us Paul’s revelation:
“So to keep me from becoming conceited because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from becoming conceited.”
Paul’s thorn kept him from arrogance. It reminded him that his success was dependent on the good graces of the Father in heaven.
Rather than complain, Paul found the good in his unfeathered nest, and he used it as his opportunity to fly further and higher for our Lord. When Jesus pulls our feathers from around us, we shouldn’t complain. We should look, instead, to jump out of the nest and depend on God to carry us just where he wants us to go.
The thorns of life are not our problem. Rather, we need to see them as God’s solution.
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