Nestled in a valley between two mammoth mountains stood a small farm. It had a few crops and some pigs and cows, and farthest to the rear, tucked at the edge of the woods, was a large fenced chicken coop.
At the top of the highest mountain, a solitary tree branch extended over a jagged cliff. In that branch sat an eagle’s nest. Mama Eagle warmed her eggs as she surveyed her vast kingdom and decided it was time to find a bite to eat. She knew she couldn’t be gone long. She could sense the life inside the eggs starting to stir.
After she flew away, a storm blew through the mountain range. A wind gust lifted one side of the nest so that the egg closest to the rim rolled out of the nest. The egg plummeted toward the valley below but happened to land in the middle of a soft fir tree branch. It dropped to another limb below, then another, then landed in a bank of gentle clover, and somehow — by reasons only a youth pastor’s story can explain — rolled all the way down the valley, underneath the fence of the chicken coop, up the henhouse ramp, and straight into the nest of the largest hen on the farm.
Mama Hen strolled up and saw all the eggs. It dawned on her that she had failed math in school. She had one more egg than she remembered, and it was the biggest of the bunch. She settled in for the night, a little befuddled but content with her larger nest of eggs.
A few days later, the eggs hatched. One chick. Two chicks. Three chicks. The larger egg on the left side started to tremble, then shake. The next thing Mama Hen knew, a beak popped out that didn’t look like any of the others.
As the rest of the shell fell away, the ugliest chicken in the coop wobbled to life. Mama Hen’s beak fell open as she shook her head. “Well, he’s mine. I’m just gonna love him, bless his heart.” She named him Iggy.
The farmer called his chickens “yardbirds,” but Mama Hen kept her ugly son hidden when the farmer came talking to his yardbirds and throwing feed.
Iggy grew up with all the chickens. He learned to eat like a chicken and walk like a chicken. On the first day of Yardbird School, the teacher lined up all of her students and taught them how to peck corn feed from the ground. Iggy couldn’t get it right. Nothing the yardbirds did seemed natural. While the rest of the chicks learned to deftly nip one end of a small earthworm, their big brother snapped a large lizard in two with his sharp beak.
One evening just before bedtime, lightning flashed and thunder roared. It shook the coop so hard that the little birdies screamed and ran under their mother’s wing. Not Iggy. The little eaglet streaked to the top of the coop, expanded his chest to twice its normal size, and shrieked into the dusk air.
Mama Hen was not happy. “You get back here, Iggy! Who do you think you are?”
“Um. I’m not sure. It just felt natural to holler back.”
“Well, we don’t holler back. And we surely don’t shriek. Yardbirds cluck. From now on, you will cluck.”
Another day, the neighbor’s cat slowly crept up to the coop. Mama Hen and the teacher spotted the cat and started clucking and ushering the chicks back inside. But Iggy let out a high-pitched shrill, spread wide his fledgling wings, and jumped straight toward the cat and into the wire fence. The collision with the fence was so violent that the cat jumped a foot in the air and darted into the brush.
The other yardbirds walked up to Iggy. “What in the world are you doing? Where did you learn to do that?”
“I don’t know,” Iggy said. “I just felt like something needed to be done.”
“Well, you can’t do that. We’re yardbirds. This is what we do — we peck and we run and we cluck. That’s it. Pretty much in that order. Understand?”
Iggy made sure he stayed in line thereafter, and soon he learned to blend in with the yardbirds as best he could. He still towered over his brothers and sisters with his white head, curved beak, long black feathers, and huge wingspan. But he followed the crowd so long that eventually he became one of them.
After years of learning their ways and falling in with the crowd, Iggy became the perfect yardbird.
Years later, Iggy and his siblings were as old and gray as yardbirds can get. One day, Iggy’s youngest brother looked into the sky and said, “What’s that?” All heads turned skyward. At first no one could make out the figure against the sun. Was it a plane? A chicken hawk?
Another yardbird finally broke the silence as a shrill whistle pierced the sky. “Oh, I know what that is. That, my friends, is the majestic eagle.”
“Ooohh,” said all the other yardbirds in unison.
The giant eagle soared over them, wings fluttering and pristine white head cocked to display his piercing, golden brown eyes. All the yardbirds gawked at him with equal parts admiration and fear.
“Can you imagine being something like that?” one sibling said. “We got to be yardbirds. But that thing got to be an eagle.”
Another sibling shook its head and blinked its eyes. “I sure wish I could be an eagle.” He smiled and threw the elbow of his wing into Iggy’s side.
“Me too,” Iggy said. “Me too.”
Iggy had the talons, the beak, the wings, the chest, the eyes, the strength, the senses, and the instincts to do everything an eagle needs to do. He was the total package. But in his head, he could never get past how he grew up and what everyone else told him. He let fear, doubt, and circumstances keep him from being who he was meant to be.
So much of how we see God and how we see ourselves is shaped by our experiences and by what others say to us and about us. Too little of what we believe about God and ourselves is shaped by what he tells us in his Word. We would do well to dig into the truth more often. How can we know what to believe in a particular trial or circumstance when we don’t know his Word? The only way any of us will ever thrive is if we first learn Scripture and then just take him at his Word.
Believe him, friend. Dive deep into his Word. Beg him to speak to you as you earnestly seek him, pour out your heart to him, and pour into your roots. You draw your sustenance, your lifeblood, from your spiritual roots.
What are you feeding your roots?
We all were yardbirds once. Only God can transform a yardbird into an eagle. But when God has made you an eagle, only you can choose to live like a yardbird.
Along with certain gifts, God gives you his Holy Spirit and daily opportunities to bring him glory. That falls under his sovereignty. But sooner or later, you’ve got to spread your wings, overcome your fear, and soar. That falls under your responsibility. But notice what comes first — God’s sovereignty. In the next chapter, I’ll show you how one of my favorite verses in Ephesians explains God’s role and our role.
Point to Remember
God in his sovereignty has a plan for our lives, but it’s up to us to respond in obedience.