The prophet Isaiah wrote:
“Yet those who wait for the Lord will gain new strength; they will mount
up with wings like eagles, they will run and not get tired, they will walk and
not become weary” (40:31). The opportunity of seeing an eagle soaring above the
Mississippi really
brings this passage to life.
One summer day, as I was walking through our back ally, I
spotted a very large crow hopping along ahead of me. As I drew near, I expected it to take off in
flight but it just hopped away. As I
kept walking, the crow kept hopping away to maintain a safe distance. Finally, as I drew too near, the crow spread
its wings but its left wing stuck out at a strange angle. No wonder it was hopping; with a broken wing
there was no way it was going to fly.
Consider both of these images and a line from the song Shout to the North: “Rise up church with broken wings, fill this
place with songs again…”
A crow might not be in the same category as a majestic bald
eagle, but a crow with a broken wing certainly is a pitiful sight, especially
when it can’t even get off the ground!
How then can the songwriter envision the church rising up with broken
wings?
To put it on a more personal level, how could we
individually rise up with wings as eagles?
After all, our mistakes, our failures, our inadequacies and our
insecurities all typically add up to some serious wing damage, perhaps even broken
ones!
The reality is, on our own, we really can’t soar with broken
wings. Neither can the Church! But the songwriter gives us a glimpse of when soaring
might be possible: “Of our God who
reigns on high, by His grace again we’ll fly.”
By grace again we’ll fly?
If anything can overcome or compensate for broken wings, it would be
grace! So we wait for the Lord and we
look to His grace and somehow we are swept up in His thermals of grace and we
soar again!
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