Isaiah 40: 21-31 (links validated 1/21/24)

The thing to note about eagles is how they fly — not by constant flutters and flaps. Rather, they unfurl their wings and catch a breeze. But you know, excepting for a gale force wind, if an eagle perches on a tree branch with her wings locked tight at her sides, ain’t no wind gonna lift her. But if she just unfurls her wings a little bit, she may find a wind to catch her. She may glide on the winds, swooping and playing — rejoicing in the work of the wind shoring her up, sustaining her. The eagle was made for this interplay of self and wind. The Hebrew word for wind is Ru’ah. It is onomatopoetic. For in it, you hear the wind. You also hear breath. Ru’ah means wind and it mean breath and it also means Spirit. The thing to note about human beings is how we fly — not by constant flutters and flaps. Rather, we unfurl our wings and catch the Spirit. We may glide on — not in our own strength but in the work of the Spirit shoring us up, sustaining us. We may swoop and play and rejoice in the work of the Spirit. We have been made for this interplay of self and Spirit. So the invitation to us — weary, tired, impatient, frustrated though we may be in the slow (literally eternal) ways of God — is to shake loose our wings or to swoop them open wide. To find that the Spirit is still at work, catching us up in a movement greater than our own strength. To allow the Spirit to retrain our desires so that we receive even the gentlest breeze of the Spirit as a gift. And, in this way, God’s benefits come to us, not only as an anchor but, paradoxically, as Spirit breath to bear us up, winds to carry us through uncertain and buffeting times, soaring above the storms.

I believe I first encountered this poem when I was in High School; I loved it instantly and memorized it. Ozymandias, by Perce Bysshe Shelley I met a traveller from an antique land, Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand, Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed; And on the pedestal, these words appear: My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings; Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair! Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away.” The kingdoms of the world at the time of the Babylonian captivity are gone now and have long since been replaced by others who don’t exist either. Perhaps there are remnants of the Persians who replaced the Babylonians in the middle east, but my point is that people of faith are called to take the long view with regard to earthly kingdoms. They will not last; what does last if the power of God to bring life from what seems like death; victory from defeat and give eagles wings, even to turkeys...

I have found myself stretched as I wrapped up reading a little book: White Lies: Nine Ways to Expose and Resist the Racial Systems that Divide Us, by Daniel Hill. At the heart of what Pastor Hill offers is this: Pointing to the observation of C.S. Lewis in The Screwtape Letters, we are reminded that “the devil is a liar.” (Both C.S. Lewis and Pastor Hill refer, of course, to the very words of Jesus where he says that ‘the devil is the father of lies.’ (John 8:39-59.) And the lie that we have bought into in this country is one of white supremacy: that we are living under the assumption, in a system, that has been built and nurtured by the lie that there is a hierarchy based on the color of our skin. And yes, this is only most obviously true of those who carry torches and shout slogans and threaten and do violence. It is also true of those of us (and I include myself in this) who find it difficult to talk about it and who, perhaps, only noticed the full impact of it in these last hard months as it has become so apparent that this pandemic has hit harder: Those without adequate health care, Those living in substandard or overcrowded housing, Those who have to ‘go to work,’ not having the privilege to stay at home, Yes, those who, for the most part, were born with a darker skin pigment than mine. Without a doubt, ‘white supremacy’ is idolatry. Anything where we put our trust in before God is idolatry. And if we do not find ways to name it, to stand up against it, to do all we can to eradicate it, then that idolatry is also ours...

C.S. Lewis asked the key question for those who know how Israel and Mary felt. What can you reasonably expect from God? You may be familiar with his story. In his early life he was a confirmed agnostic, but then to his surprise he was converted and became one of the preeminent explainers and defenders of the Christian faith in the 20th century. His books have helped millions believe in the God of the Bible, the God who became human in Jesus Christ. Lewis was particularly eloquent about the problem of pain. If you’ve seen the movie “Shadowlands,” you can hear him say, “Pain is God’s megaphone.” Lewis was a true believer who assisted many sufferers like Mary through the shadowlands of life. Then came his own valley of shadows, where he discovered disappointment with God first hand. Fairly late in life he fell in love with Joy Davidman. They were married only a short time when she became ill. Lewis called on God to heal her. He begged and pleaded. And she died. Lewis was shattered, overcome with grief. In his book, A Grief Observed, he talks about his disappointment with God. God is our refuge and our strength, he says, a very present help in trouble. But I prayed for this love of my life and God was not a very present help in trouble. In spite of all my prayers and my faith, she died. What, he asks, what can we reasonably expect from God when we’re in trouble?...

In her August 24, 2006 New York Times article entitled, “Secrets of Endurance: Eating to Go (and Go and Go),” Catherine St. Louis describes the running phenomenon that is “bonking.” She compares it to running out of gas in the fast lane of the Long Island Expressway. Australian triathlete Chris Legh fell victim to bonking at the 1997 Ironman championships. His meltdown was, in fact, so vivid that a Gatorade advertisement immortalized it. Just before Legh reached the finish line, his limbs went as limp as a rag doll’s because he was both dehydrated and underfed. “One moment he was striding,” St. Catherine reports. “The next he had collapsed.” “You can do all the training in the world,” she goes on to quote Legh as later saying, “but if you go out too fast, or make a mistake with your nutrition, then your day is done.”

This year will mark the 90th anniversary of Charles Kingsford Smith’s crossing of the Pacific Ocean in his three-engined monoplane named the Southern Cross. (This plane is now on display near the Brisbane airport). After leaving San Francisco in May 1928 and touching down in Hawaii, Fiji. Charles and his crew of 3 were given a hero’s welcome at Brisbane and then Sydney’s Mascot Airport. They had crossed the vast expanse of the Pacific Ocean with no radar, no radio navigation, just a few basic navigational instruments – a compass, a chart, a clock and just plain guesswork. What made the situation even worse was that half of the trip was spent battling violent storms and inky blackness. They had to dump precious fuel to fly in circles to climb above the storms and get their bearings. A small error of navigation would mean missing those important islands in the Pacific and so run out of fuel and perish...

How we human beings strive to be seen as important in our world. Some people will trade everything that should matter to them in order to be powerful and important according to the world's assessment. But perhaps we should remember how we look when seen from a different point of view. Isaiah tells us that we look like insects from where God is sitting.

Why do people ask questions which they don’t expect to be answered? Sometimes a question can underscore the point better than the statement of a fact. For example: “How many roads must a man walk down before you call him a man?” The answer is blowing in the wind. Bob Dylan’s song is a great example of how rhetorical questions probe the listener with an urgency to listen more deeply and reflect on our assumptions. He uses nine rhetorical questions to lay bare the senselessness of war: Yes, how many times must a man look up Before he can see the sky? Yes, and how many ears must one man have Before he can hear people cry? Yes, and how many deaths will it take till he knows That too many people have died?

("My friend Deborah Haarsma is an expert on galaxies and on astronomy generally. Sometimes when she makes a presentation for adult education classes she will conclude her talk by showing a slide of a typical night sky. On one part of the picture there is an area of sky that appears empty—there are stars all around but some parts of the sky don't contain any visible stars...")

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("My friend Deborah Haarsma is an expert on galaxies and on astronomy generally. Sometimes when she makes a presentation for adult education classes she will conclude her talk by showing a slide of a typical night sky. On one part of the picture there is an area of sky that appears empty—there are stars all around but some parts of the sky don't contain any visible stars...")

"Near the end of C.S. Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia, Lucy and the others are brought to the New Narnia—what we might call "heaven"—and are ushered into what from the outside looked like no more than a rather modest barn..."

Have you not heard of the young woman, mother of two children, who died of cancer? Have you not heard of how she, after her first round of chemotherapy, gave thanks to God for the blessing of cancer? Yes, she spoke of the people she had met and how she had been deepened in Jesus Christ and how she would not have traded the journey for anything. Have you not heard of how she knew the peace of God before she died? She lifted her eyes up to the hills and beyond to the stars and knew where her hope dwelt. Outwardly, it looked like cancer had won. To the world, many prayers for healing look unanswered. But prayers for healing were answered. The greatest healing was known; the peace of God that surpasses our understanding was given...

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