Deuteronomy 32:11-12 As an eagle stirs up her nest, flutters over her young, spreads abroad her wings, takes them, bears them on her wings:… (with Psalm 57:1): — Here we have two experiences strikingly different and yet closely related to each other. I. We have God's assurance that in His dealings with His people during their sojourn through the wilderness HE HAD ACTED TOWARDS THEM AS AN EAGLE TOWARDS HER YOUNG WHEN SHE WOULD TEACH THEM HOW TO FLY. This illustration enforces an important truth, namely, the training of the Jews by God to the healthful exercise of the growing powers within them, and the supplementing of such by His own great might, so that those who were "no people" should become "a people among the nations of the world." That was a marvellous training by which Israel was taught how to fly, a degraded people how to become a mighty nation. This represents God's method of dealing with His people — the process of training through which you and I are called to pass if we are His. God in each case begins with a pitiable object, a poor sinner broken down in heart and purpose, one who has no spirit left in him, and who withal may have fallen into the lowest depths of sin. Even though he be degraded to the greatest possibilities of human degradation, God will take up that poor man shattered in hope and expectation, and he will yet be borne up as on the wings of eagles. II. We have another aspect of God's dealings with His people, namely, THAT OF SHELTERING THEM UNDER HIS WINGS, AS THE MOTHER BIRD DOES HER BROOD IN THE HOUR OF STORM AND DANGER. "Yea, in the shadow of Thy wings," etc. There are some of us who know what it is to be on God's wings when He takes us in flight, when He inspires us with courage and teaches us to use our wings. There are others of us who have come to that experience when after all the flying, after all the doing, all the enduring, we are weary at heart, and we seek shelter under His wings, just as the eagle after her flight with her little ones takes them back into her shelter, and in effect says, "You are tired now, I will put the wings which have borne you when wearied in flight all round you to protect you alike against the storm and the foe." Thus the little ones will not even hear the storm without. They have felt the hard side of the wing: they feel the soft feathery side of it now, and the mother's love, like her warmth, goes through every young bird that gathers under her wings. The Psalmist knows what it is to have been on the wing of God, borne upon the storm so that he might learn how to fly; but now he thanks God that when he has become weary of the storm, because it is too much for his strength, he is taken back into the nest, under the warmth and shelter of that wing which formerly sustained him. There are some of you who are almost always in the shadow of God's wings. The day is drawing to a close, all the activities of life are almost over, and God, ere He takes you to His heaven, bids you come and shelter yourselves beneath His feathers. (D. Davies.) Parallel Verses KJV: As an eagle stirreth up her nest, fluttereth over her young, spreadeth abroad her wings, taketh them, beareth them on her wings: |
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