When I read about the idea of being carried on eagles wings I get a picture in my mind from movies. There is an eagle with lovely perfectly manicured feathers and a man on it's back. Maybe the person was falling and the eagle got under it and the person fell right on top of it. That person scrambled around a tiny bit and then sat as though the bird was designed for him. He sits up and the wind blows through his hair and he raises a fist and maybe lets out a big "Whoo hoo".
There are several verses that reference eagles wings. The most popular one of these is found in Isaiah 40:31. “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."
I was rereading Genesis and Exodus more slowly. I have been chewing and trying to be a little more deliberate. It does seem that speed and volume have their place; like a timelapse to see the over arching landscape as it changes but slowly looking and chewing does as well like a macro or a super slow motion of a bullet traveling through a watermelon or a drop of water landing in water.
In Exodus 19:4 "You yourselves have seen what I did to Egypt, and how I carried you on eagles' wings and brought you to myself."
The timelapse is slaves that in a scene go from being whipped, beaten and mistreated to leaving with armloads of gold to head toward a land flowing with milk and honey. They take a walk to the mountain to meet God.
The scripture shows slaves full of rebellion being mistreated and abused having their lives made harder only to being expelled by their masters with armloads of treasure. Then with their backs to the sea and facing an army they are delivered during the night by someone that they do not know doing things that they cannot see. When the daylight comes up they walk on dry ground a path that was not a path the day before while the army of the enemy is released to bear down on them. They get through and watch their enemy get destroyed. They wander through the desert, get thirsty, get hungry, complain and are disciplined.
Then God calls this being "carried on eagles wings and brought to myself".
It may sound like I am saying that God was wrong, exaggerating or misrepresenting and misremembering how all of this happened.
It's us that imagines landing on the back on an eagle and riding bareback while shouting "Wahoo".
It's the scriptures of the new testament that show the life of Christ as a series of messy indecipherable series of events. When you read how he traveled, ate, slept and ministered it's all quite confusing and kinda funny because the scripture does not really try to explain or say "But it's all cool" when showing how messy it was.
Jesus was surrounded by his people that He was given to work with. He was put in a series of situations both social and natural that were tumultuous at best. They didn't even have electricity or indoor plumbing either. The wifi was terrible an unreliable.
Jesus came from a place where the streets are gold, everything wrapped around Him and worshipped him to being overlooked, common and denigrated.
A ray of light takes eight hours and twenty seconds to travel ninety three million miles to reach earth. He is so much superior to us that a ray of light could travel 93 million years and still not be any closer to us because that is how infinity works. He is incomparably great and yet he came down and gave us an example to live by.
When we travel from one place to another it really is up to Jesus how we will travel. I cannot think of an idea more appealing than being made to ride on the wings of an eagle from one place to another until I see that Jesus uses the expression a little differently than I do. His is reality and mine is fantasy.
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