Souls Cry out for Freedom

"Our souls were made to 'mount up with wings' and can never be satisfied with anything short of flying. Like the captive-born eagle that feels the instinct of flight, and chafes and frets at its imprisonment, hardly knowing what it longs for, so do our souls cry out for freedom. We can never rest on earth, and long to 'fly away' from all that so holds and hampers and imprisons us here.

We might name our wings Surrender and Trust. By these, we are carried into a spiritual plane of the 'life hid with Christ in God,' a life utterly independent of circumstances, that no cage can imprison and no shackles bind...

Why do not all Christians always triumph? They do not 'mount up with wings,' but live on the same low level with their circumstances, powerless against trials and sorrows, overcome by and crushed under them...

The largest wings cannot lift a bird one inch upward unless they are used. We must use the wings we already have: Surrender and Trust, or they will avail us nothing. From high places we shall see things through the eye of Christ that change our lives! Instead of stirring up strife and bitterness, we will escape by simply spreading our wings and mounting up to where our eyes see all things covered with a mantle of Christian love and pity.

The mother eagle teaches her little ones to fly by making their nest so uncomfortable they are forced to leave and commit themselves to the unknown world of air outside. God stirs up our comfortable nests and pushes us over the edge, forcing us to use our wings to save ourselves from fatal falling...

The promise is sure: 'They that wait upon the Lord SHALL mount up with wings as eagles.' Not 'may perhaps mount up' but 'SHALL'...

Hannah Whitall Smith - "The Christian's Secret of a Happy Life"