Are You a Domestic Bird?

But we desire each one of you to show the same earnestness to have the full assurance of hope until the end, so that you may not be sluggish, but imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises.
- Hebrews 6:11,12

The people of God, and most all of their forms of gathering, are running shy of eagles, and we're running over with parrots. Content to sit safely on our evangelical perches and repeat in rapid-fire falsetto our religious words, we are fast becoming overpopulated with bright-colored birds having soft bellies, big beaks, and little heads. - Chuck Swindoll

Chuck Swindoll penned those words more than a decade ago. Many positives have hit the church and many a wake up call has slammed into it's walls through the intervening years. But still the fact is that as a people we're still soft!

What would help to balance things out would be a lot more keen-eyed, wide-winged creatures willing to soar out and up, exploring the illimitable ranges of the kingdom of God . . . willing to return with a brief report on their findings before they leave the nest again for another fascinating adventure. We need soaring, adventurous, fast-moving, fast-thinking, quick-witted, single-minded and determined EAGLES!

To Chuck's point it should be obvious (in keeping with the analogy and hoping that the metaphor police don't come and get me!) parrot people are much different than eagle thinkers. They become accustomed to the familiarity of the cage. If you have ever owned a parrot (I grew up with one in my house) they are incessantly picking over the same pan full of seeds. Boring and meaningless repetition such as listening to the same words until they are burned into their lil' parrot heads and can be repeated out of their oversized, giant parrot beaks provides them satisfaction and more comfort; even YEARS later!

They like complacent and similar company too. Since they are colorful and easily, at least outwardly, the "brightest" creature in the room they crave lots of attention. Provide them with a scratch here, and a snuggle there, and they'll stay for years right on the same perch and right in that same cage.

In captivity I bet you can't remember the last time you saw one fly. I can. And, when Polly's clipped wings grew out (who knew they grew out or could?)Polly flew around the room and right back to the perch. End of story.I think what Polly realized was that she did something different and, oh my gosh, different is, well, scary! Parrots like the predictable, the secure, the strokes they get from their mutual admiration society.

Not so with eagles nor with eagle believers. There's not a predictable pinion in their wings! They think. They love to think. They are driven with this inner urge to search, to discover, to hunt, to learn. And that means they're courageous, tough-minded, willing to ask the hard questions as they bypass the routine in vigorous pursuit of the truth. The whole truth. "The deep things of God" - fresh from the Himalayan heights, where the thin air makes thoughts pure and clear - rather than the tired, worn distillations of humanity. And unlike the intellectually impoverished or at least unchallenged parrot, eagles take risks getting their food because they hate anything that comes from a small dish of picked-over seeds...it's boring, dull, repetitious, and dry.

Although rare, eagles are not completely extinct in the historic skies of the church. Thomas Aquinas was one, as were Augustine, Justin Martyr, Luther, Wesley and Bunyan, Wycliffe and Huss. So were G. K. Chesterton, R. A. Torrey, Spurgeon, Moody, C. S. Lewis, Charles, Finney, John Gill, Robert Dick Wilson, J. Gresham Machen, W. R. Nicoll, and A. W. Tozer.

Many of the reformers qualify, as do Jonathan Edwards, John Newton, George Whitefield, and a long line of nonconformists - original thinkers whose lives were interwoven through the treasured tapestry of the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries.

And in our day? We could name some...but they are increasingly rarer, as the "Entertain Me" philosophy of the public outshouts those who plead, "Make me think!"

Have you fallen prey to a similar mind-set? Do you find yourself contentedly sitting on your perch (i.e. church pew), pecking at dry morsels (i.e. some pastoral lesson or some popular book) rather than longing for the skies? Get off the perch. A great way to worship and glorify and honor God is to step out, step up and attempt great exploits in His name!

Think about it. I remain...

InHISgrip,
~J~