“Bible promises: On wings like eagles”
Isaiah 40:31
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus.
Ornithologists, (that’s “bird watchers” in case your Latin is a little bit rusty), tell us that today, there are as many as ten thousand different kinds of birds in the world. Most are normal, some are strange, and a few are downright scary! Take, for example, the Hoatzin, also affectionately known as “the reptile bird,” “the stinkbird,” and “the skunk bird.” Can you guess why they call it the “stinkbird?” Because it stinks!
Weighing in at a little over two pounds and standing some two feet long, most everything about it is strange. With its red eyes, blue face, and brown mohawk, it has claws not only on its feet, but even on its wings, (which help them climb trees for safety).
And why does it stink? While most birds have one small crop to digest their food, the Hoatzin’s crop is large, and it’s folded in two, making the poor creature smell, unfortunately, an awful lot like cow manure.
But if you’re concerned that it might someday become extinct, you needn’t have to worry. Absolutely no one wants to get close to one, much less eat one for dinner!
Or how about the Shoebill? Do you know why it’s called the Shoebill? Because its bill is shaped like a shoe! While in the wild some have called them “the stork of your nightmares” and “the most terrifying bird in the world,” thankfully, when you put them in the zoo, they’re pretty calm and quiet. Good thing, because they can stand five feet tall and weigh as much as twelve pounds.
And one more--how about the Superb Bird of Paradise? With its blue fluorescent eyes, a greenish-yellow beak and jet-black feathers, (some of the blackest feathers in the world!), it hops and skips and double-snaps its wings, which, if you don’t mind me saying, drives the girls wild!
But let me tell you--those girls can be a little fussy. She’ll reject as many as fifteen to twenty of her suitors before she finds exactly the right one. Who would have thought?!
Birds--where would we be without them?
You can find birds in the Bible too! In fact, quite a lot of them! The prophet Jeremiah wrote, “Even the stork in the heavens knows her appointed seasons, and the turtledove, swallow, and crane keep the time of their migration” (Jeremiah 8:7). Psalm 84 says, “How lovely is Your dwelling place, O Lord of heaven’s armies! My soul longs, even faints, for the courts of the Lord; my heart and my flesh sing for joy to the living God. Even the sparrow has found a home, and the swallow builds her nest and raises her young near Your altar, O Lord of hosts, my King and my God” (Psalm 84:1-3). And Jesus said in Matthew chapter 6: “Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?” (Matthew 6:26).
And the prophet Isaiah had something to say about birds too. You can find it in chapter 40. I’ll start at verse 28: “Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; His understanding is unsearchable. He gives power to the faint, and to him who has no might He increases strength. Even youth shall faint and be weary, and young men shall fall exhausted; but they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint” (Isaiah 40:28-31).
From one end to the other, the Bible is full of promises, from the Garden of Eden in Genesis chapter 3 to Noah and the flood, to Moses, Joshua, and Ruth.
How many promises are there? One man, a school teacher by the name of Everett R. Storms of Kitchener, Ontario once tried to find out. After reading the Bible twenty-six times(!), on his twenty-seventh time, he decided to count all the promises he could find. And when he was done (a year-and-a-half later), he said he found 7,487 promises made by God to man. Do the math, and you’ll find that it’s one promise in every four verses--twenty promises for every day of the year. That’s a lot of promises!
And why study the promises? Because they give faith through the darkness and strength in the moment of temptation.
In the words of Dwight L. Moody, “If you would only read from Genesis to Revelation and see all the promises made by God to Abraham, to Isaac, to Jacob, to the Jews and Gentiles, and to all His people everywhere--if you would spend a month feeding on the precious promises of God--you’d never complain how poor you are. Instead, you’d lift up your head and proclaim the riches of His grace.”
In the words of a hymn: “Standing on the promises that cannot fail, when the howling storms of doubt and fear assail, by the living Word of God I shall prevail, standing on the promises of God.”
And here in the book of Isaiah, we find yet one more promise. As he wrote: “Even youths shall faint and be weary, and young men shall fall exhausted; but they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint” (Isaiah 40:30-31).
The book of Isaiah chapter 40 takes us to one of the blackest times in all the history of Judah, seven hundred years before Christ. Though King Hezekiah had been a good king, he died, leaving his throne to his son Manasseh.
But Manasseh was one of the absolute worst kings of all. The Bible says he “did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, according to the despicable practices of the nations whom the Lord drove out before the people of Israel. For he rebuilt the high places that Hezekiah his father had destroyed, and he erected altars for Baal and made an Asherah, as Ahab king of Israel had done, and worshiped all the host of heaven and served them” (II Kings 21:2-3). And if all that wasn’t bad enough, the Bible also says he consulted fortune-tellers and psychics and sacrificed his own son in the fire.
And though there were many who followed Manasseh and all his evil ways, there were others who remained loyal to the one, true God. And it was to them that Isaiah wrote: “They who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint” (Isaiah 40:31).
“They shall mount up with wings like eagles.”
Let’s talk about eagles for just a moment. Did you know that eagles are not only large and powerful birds, they’re so large and so powerful, they stand at the very top of the food chain in the bird world. In fact, bird watchers tell us that whenever any other bird captures its prey, they’ll look back over their shoulder to make sure a bigger bird isn’t coming.
But not the eagle. Nobody messes with the eagle.
But what you may not know is that one of the most fascinating parts of an eagle isn’t necessarily its seven-foot wingspan or its seven thousand feathers or its talons or its large, hooked beak, perfectly designed for ripping and tearing, or that it can dive as fast as two hundred miles an hour.
Instead, the most fascinating part of an eagle is its eyes. They have, after all, the best and strongest of any eyes in the animal world.
So how good are they? They say that even though an eagle may weigh only ten pounds, its eyes are the same size as human eyes,
And what makes them so amazing is that the backside of their eyes are flatter and they’re packed with more rods and cones, making it possible for them to see between four and eight times better than we could ever see. Not only can they see a rabbit from three miles away(!), they can identify five distinctly-colored squirrels, and exactly where they hide!
But there’s one more thing that’s amazing about those eagle eyes, and that’s they have not one, not two, but three different eyelids! And those eyelids not only help keep their eyes clean and sharp, they make it possible for them to fly in any weather--the snow, the wind, or the rain. Even more, they say that if an eagle is ever attacked by a flock of other birds, all they have to do is close one of its eyelids, and fly up high toward the sun. And there’s no way any other bird could catch him.
And while most any other bird will flap its wings and fly, an eagle soars.
In the words of Pastor Col Stringer in his book On Eagles Wings, “In conditions which would be difficult for a man to stand, an eagle can hover as steady as a rock, the wing tips moving constantly and automatically to make adjustments to the air currents.”
They’re fast, they’re strong, and they’re courageous, which makes them pretty much the top bird in all of the bird world!
And that’s just the way we can be, for as God promised: “They who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint” (Isaiah 40:31).
It was the spring of 1982, and twenty-five year old Linda Down was out of work. When she wasn’t looking for a job with her newly acquired master’s degree in social work, she read the Bible and did sit ups to try to lose weight.
And that’s when a really crazy idea suddenly crossed her mind--why not run the New York City Marathon? At first, she thought it was a great idea, but since she had cerebral palsy, chances were slim she could actually finish. But the race was six months away, and she thought she’d train for it anyway.
So hour after hour, mile after mile, and night after night, she ran and she began to realize that running in the dark was a lot like faith. As the Bible says, “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1).
Finally, the time came for the big event--October 24th at 10:30 a.m. She began at the back of the pack and, by the time she got over the first bridge, no one else was in sight.
Moving her crutches like ski poles, numb with pain, she fell six times. Still, clomping down the street she went…
Until, hours later, it got dark. Cleanup crews removing barricades stood in awe as they watched a lone woman make her way to the finish line.
Of the close to sixteen thousand runners who entered, thirteen-and-a-half thousand finished. And Linda was one of them. For just after 9:30 that night, a full four hours after the previous runner, sweaty and dizzy, her arms black and blue, she crossed the finish line, the first woman ever to finish on crutches. Her time? Eleven hours and fifty-seven seconds.
What followed was an unexpected crush of publicity. President Reagen invited her to the White House. Her picture was on the cover of the New York Times. Over and over again she heard herself described as “Linda Down, brave athlete.”
She thought, “Brave? Athlete?” Yet, she said, even with a disabled body, she was able to do something far beyond anything she had ever imagined because she trusted God and took Him at His Word.
As the prophet Isaiah once wrote: “They who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint” (Isaiah 40:31).
And that’s a promise!
We thank You, Father, for the hope, the grace, and the strength You so freely give. Help us to walk in Your footsteps as we seek to faithfully follow You, for Jesus’ sake. Amen