October 29, 2023
Deuteronomy 34:1-12
Matthew 22:34-46
He was a recently hatched pueo and he didn’t want to fly.
As far as he was concerned, nest living was plenty good. His father came by with food. His mother got it into bite-sized bits that he, well, bit. He had two sisters in the nest with him and their mother stayed with the three of them. When it was cold her feathers spread over them kept them nice and warm. When the sun got too strong during the day her wings gave them shade. When it rained they were all snug beneath her body and wings.
He didn’t mind leaving the nest. Once his legs were strong enough, he’d hop out and go exploring. So did his sisters. They didn’t go far so they didn’t find much except grass and rocks and more grass, but it made them feel like bold adventurers.
But he didn’t want to fly.
The problem was the wind. The nest was in a spot in the saddle between Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea, and the mountains funneled the wind between their slopes and peaks so that it just howled them. When he’d first stood up to go exploring, a few stronger gusts had knocked him down three times. His legs got stronger after that so it didn’t happen again, but that wind kept going and he didn’t feel any better about it.
“If that wind is going to blow like that,” he said, “I’m not flying. The ground will work just fine for me.”
His mother didn’t quite believe him, so she ignored it when he said this. His sisters took this as an opening to tease him, so they did, but they didn’t take it seriously, either. “Not going to fly, right,” they told him as they settled down to sleep. “You’ll change your mind about that soon enough.”
But as they started to exercise their new-feathered wings, flapping them up and down and front and back, he didn’t do anything of the kind. “This is going to be so cool!” one of his sisters told him.
“Cold, more likely,” he said, “without Mom’s feathers to keep you warm.”
They day his sisters took their first flight, he stayed in the nest. “I’m not going to fly,” he told his mother. “As long as that wind is blowing, the ground is fine for me.”
She might have stayed to argue but her daughters were hopping up and down and squawking about taking their first flight, so she had to pay attention to them. It didn’t take long before all three were in the air, climbing away from the nest.
“As long as the wind is blowing like this,” he said again, “I’m staying on the ground.”
The wind, in fact, blew harder. He had to lean forward into it to stay upright. It dropped to almost nothing so that he stumbled and spread his wings for balance. In that moment the wind blew a great big gust that billowed under his wings and lifted him into the air.
He was so startled that he froze with his wings still extended, rather than folding them right there and getting an uncomfortable return to the ground. He soared higher up, the wind lifting him without so much as a wingbeat. With some small movements of his tail feathers, he turned one way and another, rose up and swooped down.
When he returned to the ground and the nest, his sisters and mother were there. “You’re not going to fly, huh?” his sisters teased.
“The wind is still blowing,” said his mother.
“It lifted me up,” said her son. “I didn’t think it would do that.”
His mother nodded. “Welcome, son,” she said, “to creatures who are held on the wind.”
There are plenty of uncomfortable and even scary things in the world. Some of these things – like God – are much bigger than we are. They may make us feel overwhelmed. And some of these things – it’s best to figure out what they are – will be there to lift us up and help us fly. One of those great powers is God. The Spirit blows as it will, it’s said, and the Spirit blows to help us fly.
by Eric Anderson
Watch the Recorded Story
I write these stories ahead of time, but I don’t read them when I’m telling them. My memory leaves things out and my creativity adds things, so what you read and what you hear will not be the same.
Photo of a pueo in flight by HarmonyonPlanetEarth – Pueo (Hawaiian Owl)|Saddle Rd | 2013-12-17at17-45-012. Uploaded by snowmanradio, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=30241884.
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