Sunday 17 January 2016

Eagle and Dove Portraits


Sometimes the little bird flies low, lured in by the appearance of gentleness, and lowers her wings.  Her vulnerability is meant to be a gift, but quickly she realizes her mistake and she must turn from dove to eagle and fly up higher, higher, where the air is pure and she can breathe in and out like she needs…How she craves the oxygen of the mountain of God!  Higher still, higher still until she comes to a crevice in the rock where she takes her rest, and smoothes her feathers.  She notices a few are missing after that last squirmish, “but they will grow back,” she assures herself.
There in her hidden refuge she begins to sing and the mountains reverberate with the sound.  One sound calls to another sound.  It is caught upon the wind and transformed into a masterpiece and the ‘lonely place’ becomes a place of symphonies and choirs.  The eagle rests while the dove sings and becomes renewed in the atmosphere of His love.
Dove drinks and is revived by water from the rock.  She stays in this place for hours, knowing that, in a little while, she must return for a time to the lower levels of trial and burden.  Wiser now, and newly reminded of what she already knew, she gathers the strength she will need to to stay behind her eagle armor and above the vultures, not below them.  Her wings must hide her face and not expose it; vulnerability must never foolishness become.
Her eagle cry is heard as she flies down through the altitudes and positions herself upon a branch.  There she firmly plants her feet, one last reprieve until her script requires her to walk once more in robes of patience and longsuffering; in common halls amid the tethered trees.  That is…until the branch of forced compliance is broken and “at last, at last” she freely flies away – in light of promised day.
Gabriel blows his trumpet.  Do you hear it little eagle?  Eagle cries out such strong, powerful sound.  Yes, eagle hears it.  For that trumpet is also in eagle’s mouth.  And that is why she cannot keep quiet.  She must cry out what she was born to SHOUT!  But perhaps her forced compliance is only for a day, and serves as a tool of training “For He was led like a Lamb to the slaughter and did not open His mouth.”  “But one day,” says the Eagle, I will be free to cry out with all the sounds that are pent up inside of me, waiting like a flood, like a river of many colors to be released and streak the sky with colored banners amidst praises of the Holy One.”
“One day I will sing, not in lonely places in hidden hideaways, but before all the ones who tried to silence me.  Yes, I will sing with His trumpet of judgment in my mouth, and I will proclaim, “Fallen!  Fallen is babylon the great!”  Ha!
Breath of God, breathe on me.  For I am Your reclining tree, and You hear me, Yes, You hear me, and You deliver when I call.  Amen.
DancingKim.