Weak

I was able to attend Science Day this past week with our fifth grader and his class.   In the wooded mountain park, our first station was under the pavilion next to the creek.   There was  a man there from the Nature and Raptor Center who had three cages of birds of prey.   We were only allotted enough time to see one of the three, and the children got to vote on a nocturnal predator, diurnal predator, or a scavenger.  The vote was split, but diurnal predator won.  I anticipated a hawk and was honestly hoping for one of the other two categories.  I see upwards of twenty hawks every day.

He pulled from the cage a peregrine falcon.   He told us many facts and asked many questions. The peregrine falcon is the fastest bird and can fly over 200mph in a dive for prey.  I was intrigued.

Then he began to tell this particular falcon's story.  We all listened intently and were amazed with the long list of her lifetime achievements.  She was a mascot for the Air Force Academy and had flown in the pregame shows as a star.  When she was too old for the show, she became a part of the breeding program at the Academy and had been integral in the repopulation of the dwindling species.  When she was beyond breeding years, she was sent to the Rescue where she is now a teaching aide. 

The kids began to become a little restless--- not restless like kids get, but restless with the facts in her story.  They began to ask the handler questions.  "Are her wings injured?"  He answered that she is not injured in any way.   "If her wings are fine, why doesn't she try to fly away?" 

He explained then that she has lived her life in cages.   She hasn't flown in so many years, she no longer has the muscular strength to fly.    The pavilion went silent.  I felt myself tearing up.  She can't do what she was designed to do.  She has lost the muscles from years of cage living.  She has to be able to remember the years of flying and soaring.  While she has had a long list of "noble" bird jobs in our human world, she can't fly. 

I am afraid we as believers often get used to cage living.  We are so content with being fed and doing good things, that we forget our Designer made us to soar.  Our muscles are wasting away while we are doing good and noble things, and we are forgetting how to fly.  We may even be forgetting that we want to fly.    It is so easy to be content managing the lists of good Christian things we are to do and miss the joy of knowing the Creator and following Him wherever He takes us.  God help me to not be content with the cage. 

Isaiah 40:29-31 "He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak.  Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall;  but those who hope in the LORD will renew their strength.  They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint."