God Archives - Page 3 of 15 - Kristen Anne Glover

On Wings of Eagles

An eagle is soaring outside my kitchen window. I stand by the sink with my hands in the bubbles and I watch him, dark wings, flash of white, large against the clouds. Beneath him runs the water and the fields and a mile of sky, and above him is everything that cannot be contained by this earth.

His silhouette catches my eye in the blue of the day. Only an eagle has wings like that.

In wide, lazy circles he rides the thermals up into the atmosphere, up so high, I imagine he’s feeling the joy of his making in the presence of his maker.

I watch him as the dishwater grows tepid. Circle…circle…circle. Great counter-clockwise movements bring him up over my house where I can no longer see him and back out over the Puget Sound where surely other eyes are watching him too.

The eagle’s wings remain steady the entire time. He does not use any effort to stay up in the sky. In fact, his wings hardly move at all.

I wonder how long the eagle can soar without actually flying. The minutes pass.

One…two…three…

His tail feathers flick slightly for balance, and every once in a while, the eagle tilts his wings to keep from flying off into heaven. But he does not pump his wings even once.

With wet fingers, I flip through our bird book to the pages filled with beautiful raptors. I find out an eagle can fly 10,000 feet up in the air because he can spread out those great big wings and let the wind carry him up. He does not have to depend on his own strength to rise higher than all the other birds. He simply waits.

There’s probably a lesson in that for me.

I know in an instant I have been trying too hard. I have been muscling my way through this day, trying to make things happen because I forget that He is able.

Unexpected obstacles have thrown me off course. I have been beating my wings trying to catch up because it all seems so important and urgent

I am weary.

And I have not flown very high.

“Like a swallow, like a crane, so I twitter;

I moan like a dove;

My eyes look wistfully to the heights;

O Lord, I am oppressed, be my security.”

Is. 38:14

I am oppressed, yes, by my own fluttering. Those heights I long to reach? He is the one who must lift me there.

I long to soar like that.

Later that day, when the eagle had long since flown off, I crawl into bed with my Bible. Even with the reminder to wait, it has been a day of scrambling. “Pick a Psalm,” I say to my husband, “and I’ll read it to you while you get ready for bed.”

“Psalm 151,” he says.

“Oh, behave.”

He pokes his head around the bathroom door and smiles at me with a toothbrush in his teeth. “Okay, how about Psalm 147.”

I begin to read the ancient words and come to the ones the Spirit has been trying to speak to me all day.

“The Lord favors those who fear Him,

Who wait for His lovingkindess.”

Psalm 147:11

I stop and read them again, and Jeff looks at me. “Wow,” he says, because he knows how hard it has been to fly today and how much we have wanted God’s lovingkindness to come without much waiting.

My mind goes back to the eagle, and I remember how he soared without effort on wings I could not see. I knew why he was circling so high above my head. A bird of that size needs to eat, and often. But the eagle’s size makes hunting an exhausting ordeal. It simply cannot support itself in flight long enough to get the food it needs to survive.

But God knows what the eagle needs. He created it in such a way that its very search for sustenance is dependent on a power other than its own. The eagle must wait on the wind to be lifted up. And the wind does not fail.

When the eagle is most in need, it is most able to rest in the provision God has already made for it. It can search without growing tired, it can soar without growing weary.

Beautiful words float into my head, words I know better than to have forgotten.

“Even youths grow weary and tired,

And young men stumble and fall,

But those who wait for the LORD will renew their strength;

They will mount up with wings like eagles,

They will run and not grow weary,

They will walk and not faint.”

Is. 40:30-31

Oh, to trust it to be true!

But today is a new day, and my hunger and need is just as real as it was yesterday. Only today, I am keeping my heart and mind on the One who can sustain me through my need.

The Trouble with Rest

*100 Beautiful Days of Motherhood: 33

Two. That’s the number of times this week I set the tea kettle on to boil and walked away, only to return some time later to find it bone dry and smoking. The second time, the handle, which was made to be impervious to absentmindedness, melted off in slow agony and dropped onto the burner.

The children smelled the burning plastic and asked if I was making dinner.

I was not.

I stared at my tea kettle. The heat had caused the metal to swell abnormally. It was as fat as a little piggy and much more likely to explode. Black smoke drifted lazily up from the tar-like goo on the burner.

This was concerning to me, not just because of the fact that I very nearly gave my children an unplanned lesson on shrapnel, but because it said something about me that wasn’t good. A woman who burns her kettle dry two times in five days has issues.

My issue is this: I have trouble resting. I have so much trouble resting, I can’t even slow down long enough to brew a cup of “Quite Moments” tea. I run around like the house is on fire (which, ironically, was very nearly a reality) because I feel like I have to work my way to a place of rest.

But the work is never done and rest is always elusive because I live at work.

My “office” is strewn with socks and dirty dishes and way more Thomas the Tank Engine tracks than is professional. And while my coworker is cute and my boss is great, the subordinates tend to run around half naked and spill milk. Everywhere I turn, I see reminders of the things I have yet to do, have not done well, or have not done at all.

Sometimes, I just want to put on a pair of heels and commute. Preferably to Hawaii. Perhaps then I could find a way to be done at the end of the day.

But of course, being done is not the point and work is not the problem. The problem is not the dishes in the sink or the floor that needs mopped. The problem is I lack the faith to rest the way God commands. I lack the faith to be still, to be quiet, and to pursue the things that are more important than dusting the furniture.

I lack the faith to trust that my identity in Him is secure, even if my work is not done.

There will always be work. But here in the middle of the mess, I am commanded to rest. Rest, true rest, is what I need. Not like when I go to bed and dream about cleaning my kitchen. Not like when I finally get all the rooms straightened up on the same day and I collapse into the couch, exhausted. Not like when I finally check everything off the to-do list and feel like I’ve earned it.

True rest is a grace. It sees the work left to do and nourishes me anyway. It sees that I am not yet done and rewards me with strength for the course. It resets the priorities that have gotten scrambled and brings my focus up from the temporal to the eternal.

I forget that sometimes, and I fight against it. I act like God is punishing me, somehow, by calling me to a place of rest. I kind of think that if He wants me to rest, He should find a way to clean my kitchen first. But He doesn’t do that. He leaves the mess, and asks me to leave it too.

So I put the kettle on, but I struggle with the fear that if I take some time off, my entire world is going to descend deeper into chaos and disorder. Who is going to do the dishes while I sip my tea, God? I sneak off and try to put away some laundry while I wait for the water to boil and pretty soon, I find myself face-to-face with a charbroiled kettle.

The truth is, I can never work my way to rest because rest is an act of faith. It requires me to act on the promise of God that one day, the meaningless repetition of earthly work will end. All that is lacking in me will be filled up, and all that is undone will be completed. I will no longer live at work.

I will live at rest.

So tonight, I am putting the kettle on. It’s a little rusty now and I can’t quite pry the lid off because the knob burned off. I am not done with my work. I guess that’s why it’s the perfect time to act on the belief that even in my imperfection, God’s promises are true. Not being done is the best reason to practice being at rest.

Fathers and Daughters: 100 Beautiful Days of Motherhood {23}

My dad died when I was not much older than she is now. I think of it in moments like this when he puts his arms around her shoulders and squeezes her to his side.

I think of it when he calls her Fluffer-Puff and asks her about her day, or when she’s tucked into her bed with a book and he sits down by her feet and talks to her in his unhurried way. He is never as hurried as I am.

I think of it when he builds the Swing of Awesome because he knows she’ll love it. It’s constructed out of a curvy old bike handle and a length of chain strung way up high in a sprawling tree. He pushes her out over the field where the bank slides away and her giggles fly away into the sky.

I can’t watch.

I think of my dad when her dad buys her bread sticks because she likes them, or when he let her have chickens even though he did not want chickens. But she did.

I think of it when he asks me how he can pray for her better, and I am reminded of how my own father prayed for me. It is not even a memory. It is part of my making.

And it minsters to me so deeply, the fatherhood of my husband toward our children. I see in him the love my own father had for me, and I am grateful. I see in him the love the heavenly Father has for me, and I am amazed.

I watch them together and I am thankful that she has him. I am thankful that her father’s love will lead her to understand the love of the Father. I know my husband is securing her affections toward the things that are good and holy, pure and righteous, beautiful and lovely. My daddy did the same thing for me, and if the story repeats itself as I think it will, she will not be able, after, to choose anything less.

So on this beautiful day of motherhood, I am thankful for the ministry of fatherhood. I am thankful that God has given us a picture of Himself that I can’t see in my mirror. I am thankful that I can see it in him.

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