| God does not always allow His dear children to be flourishing and prosperous and healthy, or even active. He who says that “I am God … declaring the end from the beginning” knows what the future, both time and eternity, holds for us, and He permits those trials and sorrows and adversities which He deems best for us. How well it is pictured by the mother eagle, who, when her brood of eaglets reaches the stage where they need to learn to fly, “stirreth up her nest” and pushes out her offspring. As they fall screaming into the air, trying to use their yet not fully developed wings, she “fluttereth over her young,” and as they go downward, she “spreadeth abroad her wings” and, flying under them, “taketh them, beareth them on her wings.” And “so the Lord” deals with His people. He permits our comfortable circumstances to be stirred up; He thrusts us into situations with which we can’t cope. “The brook dried up,” or “there was given to me a thorn in the flesh.” But the Lord intervenes, saying, “I bare you on eagles’ wings, and brought you unto Myself,” assuring us that “they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles.” |
