Mother’s Day Sermon
Hilary Price
May 2012
Good Morning. Sorry Charles isn’t here. He has been in Columbia and now he has moved down
to Chile. And when he was in Columbia he was very chilly, was very cold. He was saying, “I
am putting on seven blankets at night and it’s still cold.”
I said, “Well I hope you won’t be chilly in Chile.” So that’s where he is on. He’ll be back
actually on Thursday.
So today is Mother’s Day and I know that is wonderful for some and painful for others and
hopefully there is a place in the thing I am going to say for all of us, wherever you come in the
spectrum today.
And we have all had a mother even we have never been a mother. And we were all once
children.
So I am going to be thinking a little bit about parents and their relationships with their children,
but putting that also in the context of having a heavenly Father and His relationship with me as
His child and you as His child.
And when we are children we find a lot of things confusing. We still do when we are adults, but
when we are children we actually admit it. When we are adults we just pretend we know it all.
So this little list I am going to read to you has come from a Catholic elementary school and they
were asked questions about the Old Testament and the New Testament. And their answers
haven’t been touched, the spelling hasn’t been corrected; this is what they said.
Adam and Eve were created from an apple tree.
Noah’s wife was called Joan of Arc and Noah built an arc, which the animals came into
in pears (spelled ‘pears’).
Moses led the Hebrews to the Red Sea where they made unleavened bread, which is
bread without any ingredients.
The Egyptians were all drowned in the dessert.
Afterwards Moses went up on Mount Cyanide to get the Ten Amendments.
The greatest miracle in the Bible is when Joshua told his son to stand still and he obeyed
him.
Jesus was born because Mary had an immaculate contraption.
The people who followed the Lord were called the 12 Decibels.
The epistles were the wives of the apostles.
(This is genuine.)
Christians have only one spouse – this is called monotony.
Mother’s Day – 2012 – Hilary Price Page 1 St. Paul cavorted to Christianity. He preached holy acrimony, which is another name for
marriage.
So I don’t know where you are in that, whether you are in the midst of holy acrimony. Listen to
this child:
After the christening of his baby brother in church, Jason sobbed all the way home in the
back seat of the car. His father asked him three times what was wrong and finally the
boy replied, “That preached said he wanted us to be brought up in a Christian home.
And I wanted to stay with you guys.”
So I don’t know what is going on in your home and what you are showing your children and
teaching your children and giving your children.
Jonas Salk said,
“You can give your children but two things: one is roots, the other wings.”
So this morning we are going to look at how a parent gives a child roots and wings and how God
gives His children roots and wings. And we are going to consider what the Bible calls a mystery.
Proverbs 30:18-19 the writer says,
“There are three things too amazing for me, four that I do not understand: the way of an
eagle in the sky, the way of a snake on a rock, the way of a ship on the high seas, and the
way of a man with a young woman.”
And we are just going to look at one of those – we are going to look at the way of an eagle in the
sky. And we are going to learn amazing lessons from the bird that is called the king of the air. It
is a remarkable bird.
Jesus said, “Look at the birds.”
He often told us to look at the picture book around us to learn lessons from what we see. So
today the eagle will be our teacher.
The eagle starts off as a very scrawny buggley eyed little creature. And somehow it grows to be
a majestic bird with a wing span of up to 7 ½ feet. It has talons that are four times stronger than
a human hand. It can weigh up to 11 kg. It can reach speeds of up to 120 km. /hour. It can fly
50-100 miles a day in search of food. It can spot its prey over a kilometre away – some say 3
kilometres.
It can fly higher up into the heavens than any other bird and it can live for 70-120 years. It is a
majestic bird.
Mother’s Day – 2012 – Hilary Price Page 2 So how does this little eagle morph into this amazing creature? How does the parent eagle give
roots and wings to the baby eaglet?
Actually it begins at birth. When the baby eagle is born in the shell, it has to peck its way out of
the shell. So the mother can hear it, she can see the little beak coming. It can take three days for
it to peck its way into the world.
And in that time the mother does not help. I know as moms you will be thinking how hard that
must be. You just want to go and just help and then the baby could get out.
But this is the first test for the mother and the baby eagle. And being a mother is all about letting
go. And in this situation you let go before the baby is even born.
If the mother pecked a hole and let the baby come out, it would not be a baby that would survive.
If it doesn’t have the strength and the will to peck its own way out of the egg then it is not going
to be a baby that will thrive.
So the baby arrives and it finds itself in a nest, a massive nest. I became a little bit kind of
obsessed with eagles when I saw a pair this summer in Nova Scotia and discovered the nest that
they had been living in. It was way up in a tree and it was enormous; it was the biggest nest I
had ever seen. They can be three feet deep and they can be eight feet across.
And so the little bird; at first it pecks its way out of its shell, its egg, sits in this little nest and it
cannot see out. It can’t see over the top.
That’s the time to give the little baby roots, give them muscles in its wings, stability, routine,
nourishment, all the things you pour into a child when they are very little.
And the parent disciplines the child and prunes their roots, but you don’t cut, you don’t clip their
wings; you simply prune their roots. There is a big difference.
And those wings that stretch over two metres across start off as tiny little wings. And the wing
muscles have to start developing when they are little so when the time comes to fly they will be
ready.
You don’t push your children out of the nest without helping them to develop first.
And despite the fact (this amazes me) that eagles are the most competent fliers among the whole
bird kingdom, they do not instinctively know how to fly. If the mother bird and the father bird
do not teach them, they will never lift off the ground. They have to be taught.
And what goes on between an eagle and its baby is what in the natural world is called imprinting.
In imprinting there is a bond established between the baby and the first thing it sees.
So a little duck was born and the first thing it saw was a beach ball. So it would only go where
the beach ball rolled. And it spent its whole life trying to mate with beach balls.
Mother’s Day – 2012 – Hilary Price Page 3 So the eagle locks on to its parents. That’s the first thing that they see. And the eagle simply
learns by watching. This is a huge challenge to parents because they see what you want them to
see and they see what you don’t want them to see.
And the little baby watches the parents soaring in the sky and it sees it swooping down for meals
and bringing it home to the nest.
And little by little the parent is teaching the baby one day you will do this yourself.
So how will it get to that place to do it? Well, here the eagle differs from other birds as well.
We have at the moment a pair of cardinals nesting in the clematis just on the garage on my
neighbor’s house. And they are busy all day, busy all day. And in the little nest there are three
little cardinals all just sitting with their mouths open. If you put a speech bubble above them
they would just be saying, “Feed me, feed me, feed me.”
And the mother flies around and she comes and she pops the worm into the baby’s mouth.
Well eagles don’t do that. Eagles fly off. They get their prey, which is always fresh meat eagles never feed on dead carcasses like vultures. Vultures will gorge at a carcass until they are
sick.
Eagles actually get fresh meat, they bring it back to the nest and they don’t put it next to the
baby; they put it away from the baby. So the baby has to strengthen its legs to get to the food
and then it has to learn how to tear off little appropriate bite-size pieces so when it does leave the
nest it knows how to tear off the meat.
And as the baby eats, its muscles are gradually being strengthened, not just because it is taking in
food, but because remarkably, the mother sits on the edge of the nest while the baby is eating and
she flaps her wings. And because the baby copies the mother, while it is eating it is flapping its
wings. So it’s actually developing its wings as well as eating the food.
I am giving you a lot of spiritual parallels here – I am not going to put up a big light every time I
give you one because it would get tedious for you, but just ask the Lord to show you the spiritual
truths behind the physical pictures I am giving you this morning because they are pretty
remarkable.
So the baby is in the nest, the food is coming, it is taking the food, it is flapping its wings, and it
continues to grow. And then the mother starts to hover above the nest and she creates a down
draft, which lifts the little chick off its feet and it finds itself for a moment flying in the nest and
then it drops back down again.
And I love this picture because the first flight that the eagle baby takes is tiny. It hardly realizes
it has done it and it has done it within the confines of the nest. That’s adventure and it’s fun.
Mother’s Day – 2012 – Hilary Price Page 4 And you need to have fun and adventure in your nest, your home, or your children will go and
look for it somewhere else. If everything you do is boring, why would they want to be in your
nest? They will be wanting to be in the nest of the family down the road who do the fun things.
So incorporating fun is really, really important. The children learn, they learn what they can do
physically and what they can’t do in their muscles, and that all goes on in the nest when they are
little.
So from the moment this baby is born it is learning to be independent. It has cracked its way into
the world, it is tearing its own meat, it is testing out its wings, the mother is hovering. But the
mother leaves the bird for long stretches of time by itself.
Every baby and every child needs to have time in a place where the mother is not. Parenting is
not about holding so tightly to your children as long as you can; it’s about gradually letting your
children go.
And Alice Bradley said, “I knew there would come a time when I have would have to say ‘goodbye’ to my little boy. I just didn’t realize it would happen again and again.”
And it does. There’s that first time you leave your child with somebody else to babysit. There’s
that time they walk away from you into the daycare program.
Depending on what their personality is, my children all did that very differently. Hannah had
tears streaming down her face and kept waving and kept waving. And Laura didn’t give me a
backward glance and just went whisking off into daycare.
But they changed in their personalities. Hannah didn’t remain that little child who cried when
her mommy wasn’t there, but it was hard at first. And sometimes it’s hard for you. And I have
seen mothers standing at the gate bawling. “Bye darling!” And the kid’s like, “Mom, just go.”
Letting go is not natural. It’s against all our instincts. We just want to protect but we’re in great
danger of overprotecting.
And unfortunately now we have a whole breed of moms, which we will call helicopter moms.
And this is not healthy helicopter stuff hovering above to let the down draft lift them up. This is
very unhealthy helicopter moms.
And what these moms do is they hover over their children’s lives all the time and they have
several ways of doing it. They are invisible but they are there. Because they have a cellphone,
so they send their kid off with a cellphone. And the kid thinks, “I am on my own.”
Oh, but they are not on their own because they get to where they are going and they are doing
what they are doing, and the phone rings. And they pick it up and, “Oh, yes, of course it is
Mom.”
And Mom says, “Where are you?”
Mother’s Day – 2012 – Hilary Price Page 5 “Well, you know where I am – I am at Susan’s. I said I was going to Susan’s.”
“What are you doing?”
“Well we are watching the television.”
“The television? What certificate is the film you are watching?”
And they are just butting in on their children’s lives and then they start giving advice.
“Are there any parents in the home? They’re not? You can leave that room you know; if you
don’t like that film you can walk away.”
And the child is actually being controlled – well, trying to be controlled by the mom who is at a
distance but still wanting to be in there, interfering and not letting the child make their own
decisions, not let them be responsible, not make them make their own mistakes and discover
there are consequences when you make mistakes.
I remember being at a friend’s house once. I was about 13. Her parents were out. We began
watching a movie. We didn’t know it was a horror movie – it became a horror movie. To our
horror, it became a horror movie.
At that moment we had a choice whether to watch or not. Well, we were intrigued, so we started
watching and watching and then this terrible image came on the screen and I just screamed and
ran out. I was running down (she lived in this really old house with dark corridors) – we were
running down the corridor and I didn’t know that she had screamed and run with me. I was
running down the corridor and I looked behind me and she was there! We both ran away into
another room and then I said, “Go back and switch the television off” and she said, “No, you go
back.”
So we kind of crept in like this and switched the television off.
Now why did I do that? I didn’t do it because my mom called me and said, “What are you
watching? Are you sure it’s decent?”
I did it because my mom never brought horror movies into my home. She brought fresh meat,
good stuff. And I learned from my mom. I learned by observing. And I never watched a horror
movie again in my life. I loathe horror movies and I learned by my own experience.
I really feel sad now in the world of technology that the offensive to spy on your children has
ramped up several notches with the world of Facebook. So now we have parents who can
actually spy into their children’s worlds. And believe me, they do.
Mother’s Day – 2012 – Hilary Price Page 6 They look at what their children are wearing, they look at who they are hanging out with, they
look at what they are saying. And if they don’t like it, they call them up and tell them. “I
noticed you said…”
We have to give our children space where the mother is not present and trust them that what they
have learned will equip them to deal with whatever happens in that space.
I don’t do Facebook. Please don’t ask me to be your friend. I am not going to be your friend. I
don’t like it personally. I don’t want people knowing everything about my life. And when it
came out I made a decision, really because of this mother spying thing that I loathe.
And my son was a teenager and I know it was his darkest fear that I would be able to get into his
world and see what he was doing. So I don’t do Facebook and I have this horrible feeling that if
I asked if I could be a friend, he would reject me, so I didn’t ask if I could be his friend.
The time to leave the nest will come. It’ll come soon. But the children have got to have taken
responsibility and started making decisions for themselves and discovering “if I do a bad thing
then there will be a bad consequence and I will get hurt.”
And sometimes they get hurt and sometimes they eat bad things, but they won’t be bad things
that you have brought into the home and exposed them to.
And when it is time to leave the nest – and this is the amazing thing about eagle parents – they
do two things to encourage their babies to fly: it is so simple – they stop feeding them.
So the baby sits and sees the mom and the dad out there. We watched this this summer circling
around, a big juicy rabbit hanging out of the beak. They watch mom and dad coming – “Oh
good, dinner’s coming.”
Dinner flies past. Dinner flies around the lake. And the baby starts to scream. So the mom
comes back again. Now Dad comes. Now he has got something bigger and juicier. And the
baby in the end is just yelling. We heard him. “Feed me!!” And they won’t and they don’t.
And not only do they not feed the baby, what they now do is they make the nest a very
uncomfortable place to live in. So they stir it all up and all those lovely feathers that she plucked
off her heart above her chest to line the nest that is so symbolic, she clears them all out. “Okay,
we are done now. All the grass goes. All the soft hay goes. All the toys that apparently eagles
pick up anything they bring back – rattles, dolls, all kinds of things are in the eagle’s nest. Those
go out.
No food, no comfort, no toys; you are on your way. So now this little bird has a choice, and we
have a choice.
Parents of Canada: I don’t know there’s any nation on earth that has so many adults living in the
basement of the parents in the homes in Canada. This is not a problem in Britain because we
don’t have basements, so that’s it. They have to go.
Mother’s Day – 2012 – Hilary Price Page 7 I wonder how many of you (I am not going to ask you to put your hands up) have a kid over the
age of about 25, they’re done university and they’re living in the basement.
Let me just tell you something. If you are still doing your kid’s washing and they are 26 years
old and the only time they ever come up from the basement is when they smell the aroma of your
delicious cooking and they plop themselves down at the table and you feed them yet again, they
will be there until they are 56 years old. And the only time they will come up and stay upstairs is
when you cease to be shuffling around up there because you have shuffled off your mortal coil
and they think, “I get the house.”
It’s so dangerous to just keep your children at home and let them stay there. It’s time to
encourage them on their way. And we can do that by stirring up the nest. We take away all the
soft stuff and we leave these little pointy bits sticking up, which are really hard to sit on.
This is exactly what God did. Deuteronomy 32:11 says,
“Like an eagle that stirs up its nest” (makes it uncomfortable) “hovers over its young”
(showing them how to fly), “spreads its wings to catch them” (he pushes them out of the
nest) “and he carries them on his pinions.”
So is the Lord God with His people. God stirred up the nest of the children of Israel when they
were living in Egypt. He sent plagues, pointy, nasty things, so that they would no longer want to
live there, so they would want to leave, so they would learn to depend on Him. So He could
guide them and He could rescue them and He could provide for them, not the masters they were
living under in Egypt.
It might well be that your children have just become far too comfortable in the nest. Nothing is
expected of them. It might well be that you have become far too comfortable in the nest.
Sometimes God will destroy our nests because we have started to put our confidence in them.
I have spent years building this house, Lord, this business Lord, this retirement plan. And now I
just depend on that instead of God being the anchor of my soul.
And when I settle down like that, probably you know, in my early 60’s, I have no concept of
flying anymore. I am just in my nest and I don’t go out and hunt for my food, my fresh meat. I
just turn up and let the pastor drop it on the plate every week because my spiritual life is ebbing
away from me.
We can become so comfortable and when we do, God in His goodness stirs up the nest. And we
may think, “What is happening? Everything looked just so good. Everything was going so
well.”
Mother’s Day – 2012 – Hilary Price Page 8 But God wants us to discover that underneath are His wings, His everlasting arms and our
security is not in our bank account and our homes and our retirement plans, but in the Lord
alone.
And you know, in the Old Testament God stirred up the nest and He got them out and He got
them into the desert to bring them to Himself. He fed them. He clothed them. He provided for
them.
But look what He said in Exodus 19 when they got to Mount Sinai, Verse 4:
“You yourselves have seen what I did to Egypt, and how I carried you on eagles’ wings
and brought you to myself.”
But they didn’t come to Him. He carried them, but they did not come to Him. So they never
learned to fly. Flying would have taken them into the Promised Land; they stayed in the desert
because they refused to be brought to God Himself and to trust Him.
And they wandered around for forty years. And that was not God’s intention. It is not His
intention for us. He wants us to get out of the nest and to try our wings.
And eagles were created to fly, not to sit in the nest spectating and cheering on all the other birds
that are flying past.
Let me read this lovely poem called “Your World” by Georgia Douglas Johnson:
Your world is as big as you make it
I know for I used to abide
In the narrowest nest in a corner
With my wings pressing close to my side
But I sighted the distant horizon
Where the skyline encircled the sea
And I throbbed with a burning desire
To travel this immensity
I battered the cordons around me
And cradled my wings on the breeze
Then soared to the uttermost
Reached with rapture, and power, and ease!
How does that little bird soar to the uttermost? Well it watches its parents until the moment
comes the nest is no longer comfortable and the unthinkable happens – the bird pushes the baby
out.
And the baby, panicking, starts to hurtle towards the ground, seemingly plummeting to its death
(probably feeling like the psalmist in Psalm 73:2, 25,)
Mother’s Day – 2012 – Hilary Price Page 9 “As for me, my feet had almost slipped; I had nearly lost my foothold.”
And then he realizes,
“Who have I in heaven but you? And being with you I desire nothing on earth.”
He makes the switch from leaning on the people around him on earth to realizing I have nobody
but God and I desire nobody but God.
And this plummeting eagle falls and just before it hits the ground the most remarkable thing
happens: the parents, who he wasn’t watching, have been hovering up above, praying (that’s
language for us), watching your child. And then it swoops down, lifts the bird up and carries the
bird.
“I carried you on eagles’ wings”, God says.
And the big eagle will do that with the little eagle over and over again. And then the little eagle
gets more confident, starts to fly, keeps flying, turns around, “I’m too far from home, I can’t get
back”, and the parent comes again and brings the bird home.
And then it does a beautiful thing: instead of coming underneath its baby, it comes alongside it.
And they stretch their wings, and tip to tip it supports the tip. Even when your children are
adults, you can be supporting the tip sometimes, but you don’t need to be right underneath them
anymore.
And they will repeat this pattern, underneath and supporting the tip until the young bird realizes
“the wind will hold me. I can fly!”
There is a difference between flying and soaring. And eagles soar. Eagles do not flap their
wings.
Do you flap your wings?
They only move their wings to adjust the course that they are flying on. They soar on the air
currents and they were born to soar. And what they do is they wait on the edge of the rock –
they wait when they see all the other birds leaving and all the other birds flying around, they can
wait hours until they sense the uplift of warm air.
And then they simply launch themselves off the rock and they are lifted high into the heavens
through no effort of their own. They are soaring in the Spirit and the wind, the wings of the
Spirit.
There is nothing more glorious than seeing an eagle effortlessly soaring on the wings of the
wind, being all they were created to be. That’s what they were born for.
Mother’s Day – 2012 – Hilary Price Page 10 There is nothing more thrilling than seeing your child soar on the wings of the Spirit and become
all they were created to be - dependent on God and not dependent on you.
If you insist on continually propping your children up they will never, ever discover the wind can
hold them, and you will be in the way.
They will never discover the power of God for themselves; they will never discover what we
read at the beginning of this service.
“Those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like
eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not faint.” [Isa.40:31]
How do you soar on wings like eagles? Well you have to be an eagle. You have to be born an
eagle. We are all born turkeys, basically - me, my children. You have to be born again. You
have to become an eagle.
And filled with the Spirit, you are born to soar, not to live in the comfort of the barnyard.
Turkeys don’t fly. I wonder if you are still a turkey. I wonder if you are wanting your children
to be turkeys and all live happily and safely in the barnyard together where you control
everything and there is not a chance they are ever going to become an eagle.
Those who wait on the Lord will renew their strength. The word wait there has within it the
thought of weaving where your will, your child’s will, is being woven and bound into God’s
will. It takes time; it takes intimacy.
And when the two come together it is time to soar on eagle’s wings that don’t flap but rest on the
wind. He gives strength to the weary. Apart from Him you and your child can do nothing.
And you will never discover that truth until you have nothing apart from Him, until you actually
launch off the rock and find out whether the wind will hold you. And if it doesn’t, if He doesn’t,
you will crash to the earth.
So when the time is right, the eagle has waited, they take off and they soar effortlessly up and up
and up. And the challenge of being eagle Christians is learning to wait on the Lord until we
catch the wind of His Spirit.
And eagle believers are those who seek to find out where God is, where God is moving, and they
launch into what God is already doing.
Jesus Himself said in John 5:19,
“I tell you the truth, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees the
Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son does also.”
He is caught up in the updraft of what God is doing.
Mother’s Day – 2012 – Hilary Price Page 11 And once you have given your children roots, they have had that time at home, and you have
given them wings, you have to get out of their way so they can then discover for themselves the
strength and the power and the enabling of the wind of the Spirit.
You cannot ground your child for life – half an hour does it. You cannot support your child for
life. You can in prayer, but not with every other means that you are throwing at them.
You have to let your child go, so God can draw them to Himself. And they will fall if they do
not rest on the Spirit of God.
You cannot control where God takes your child and you have no right to. If your child is a child
of God and a disciple of Christ, they get their instructions from Him. And guess what He said?
“Go into all the world.”
He didn’t say, “Go as far as your mom wants you to and where she can keep an eye on you.”
He said, “Go into all the world.”
You have no idea where the wind will take your child. Eagles are the only birds that can soar
above the second heaven, which is above, apparently, 15,000 feet altitude.
When you let your baby go, they can go a long way.
I read this amazing story last week. It was in a Dallas newspaper about a Delta Airline pilot who
was flying at 27,000 feet and suddenly a salmon slapped the front windshield of the plane 27,000 feet. And they decided it had happened because an eagle had been above that and had
been disturbed and had dropped it prey and it slapped on the windshield of the plane.
So I e-mailed my son who is a pilot and said, “Watch out for flying salmon up there!”
You know the only time the eagle flies into the second heaven is during a storm. In the lightning
and the thunder it goes into the storm when most animals hide (especially turkeys who all go
running under the hut) the eagle goes into the storm.
And it’s the only creature that flies so high – it’s got special wings, special things so it doesn’t
get cold, it has special eyes so it can actually look directly into the sun. (I hope you are picking
up all the spiritual parallels here.)
It looks directly at the sun and if other things attack it, they cannot look at the sun, so it just
focuses on the sun and the enemies all fall away because they can’t keep up because they can’t
look at the sun.
We will talk about the storm in a moment but I want to think for a moment about eagle eyes,
which are remarkable.
Mother’s Day – 2012 – Hilary Price Page 12 Eagles have three eyelids. They have a big one that flips up (that’s how they shut their eye) and
a little one at the top, and then they have a piece of gauze and it goes left to right, not up and
down. It goes across their eye, and that’s how they look at the sun. They are protected by the
gauze.
But they also have in their eye pectin - I don’t know if it’s the same pectin you put in your jam to
make your jam set but this pectin gives them a homing device and it allows eagles to find their
way home when they are thousands of miles away.
And the way they do it; as they get away from their home and their nest, because of this pectin in
their eyes, a certain amount of pain and pressure starts to build up. As they get closer to home,
the pain decreases. That means the eagle always instinctively returns home.
Isn’t that an amazing picture? When your child has Christ in them and they seem to be going a
long way away, they will always be in pain. And they will want to live in pain for some time,
some of them.
But something in them will call them back and as they get closer to home (not your home on
your street, but God Himself) the pain will cease.
The other thing that is amazing about eagles is that they can see what other birds cannot see.
They have this phenomenal eyesight.
Job 39: 27-29:
“Does the eagle soar at your command” (God says to Job) “and build his nest on high?
He dwells on a cliff and he stays there at night; a rocky crag is his stronghold.
“From there he seeks out his food; his eyes detect it from afar.”
My dad sent me this little poem (my dad’s head is full of poems about the eagle):
He clasps the crag with crooked hands
Close to the sun in lonely lands
Ringed by the azure world he stands
The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls
He watches from his mountain walls
And like a thunderbolt he falls
This eagle sets its sight either on its prey or on the sun to soar. And it shows us a different kind
of Christian life. If we soar with eagle’s wings then we are not bound up and enmeshed by the
standards and the goals of the people around us. In fact we might well become a threat to them.
And people will not understand why you do what you do, but you see what they don’t see.
So you go places and they say, “Why are you going there? Isn’t it dangerous?”
Mother’s Day – 2012 – Hilary Price Page 13 “Yes.”
You see what they don’t see. I have three kids who see what I haven’t always seen. And I have
taught my children things but believe me, they have taught me far more than I have ever taught
them.
My two girls see what other birds don’t see. They are part of the Movein teams in Toronto. The
Movein teams have moved into areas in Toronto that have been recognized as high need. They
have moved in to be present, to love, to pray, to be amongst the people.
One of my daughters lives in a mainly refugee community – many Muslims, many broken
families, many single moms, much pain.
The other lives in Moss Park, which is an area – there is a big park; it is inhabited by drug
dealers, women, prostituted women, there is a big Salvation Army men’s home. All the men are
asked to leave in the morning, so when I park and walk to her house I am walking through the
most amazing people on the street. And these people are becoming her friends and she goes to
the movies with some of them.
Do you know one of biggest obstacles to young people going in to Movein? Do you know what
it is? Their parents.
It’s great, the theory – oh yes, you can go anywhere, until the rubber hits the road. And then
suddenly we don’t want them to go anywhere.
“Why would you want to go and live in a place like that? You are not going to make any
difference. It is not safe. There are storms out there.
Eagles love storms.
When Hannah was young – she was about 19 – she went to Zambia. She went to work amongst
children affected by and infected by AIDS. And Hannah had wanted to do this since she was a
child.
And we had taken the children to Africa when they were little – we have a picture of them
standing, playing with African children in a compound. She was seven years old.
And when she went to Africa somebody said, “When did you want to go to Africa and be with
these children?”
She said, “When I discovered these children existed.” Simple as that.
So now we go to the airport and we get to that place where you can’t – “passengers only beyond
this point”, and Hannah is in the way Hannah, her lovely dramatic way, tears are streaming down
her face and she says, “I am stepping into my dream.”
Mother’s Day – 2012 – Hilary Price Page 14 And she was! Tears were streaming down my face but my daughter was going to find her
eagles’ wings and she was a passenger on God’s flight.
It was not my place to say, “I don’t want you to go – what if you get ill and what if this and what
if that?”
I just encouraged her all the way along.
Don’t bring your kids into this church and let them hear about mission and sacrifice and people
putting themselves out there for God, wanting to be a nurse, wanting to be a doctor, and then
when they come to you and say, “I’d love to be a nurse”, you say, “Oh no, no, I don’t think that’s
a very good idea.”
This is not the church you are walking in to. Don’t sit in the pews and think, “Oh, that’s
wonderful for their daughter and their son is such an amazing man and I will support them. I
will put money in the faith offering. Do that by all means, but not my child; you are not taking
my child, God.”
We don’t have the right to do that.
My other daughter is a nurse. She has just been to London in England for five months to do a
course on tropical diseases. Why? Because people all over the world are dying with tropical
diseases and one day God will get hold of that course and He will send her somewhere.
It is not my place to say, “Don’t go. People are dying.”
Do go – people are dying.
We have to encourage our children to wait on the rock, weaving their will to God’s will. And
when the updraft comes, it’s not our place to suddenly start clipping their wings and saying, “Are
you sure you want to do that? Couldn’t you pursue a nice safe little job and we’ll live on a nice
safe little street, preferably near to my safe little street.”
And actually what we’ll all be doing is living in the barnyard, but we’ll all be safe.
You see, my son has chosen to be a pilot and it’s really the culmination of his desire to fly since
he was a little boy. And he would fly however he could. He would fly on his dirt bike. He
would fly on his quad bike. He flew off his quad bike. He landed in a ditch. He slit his wrist
open. I mean he had so many accidents. He flew on his skateboard. He flew off the garage roof
on his skateboard.
I didn’t say, “Don’t do that Matthew.” I helped him build the ramp to land on in the snow to fly
off the garage roof.
Even when he bought a car he tried to see if the car would fly over the speed bumps. Matthew
was born to fly.
Mother’s Day – 2012 – Hilary Price Page 15 Your child is wired by God to be what God wants them to be.
And I am thrilled for Matthew and I have flown with him. And he loves to spin and tumble.
And then we get up in the plane and he says, “Do you want to experience zero gravity Mom?”
I’m like, “No, this is just fine.”
“Do you want us to spin?”
“No, no, this is just lovely. I am enjoying the view. I don’t want to view to be up there. I want
it to be down there.”
Charles will spin and tumble with him but I won’t do that. I will encourage and I will fly with
him.
He says, “Okay, well then if you don’t want to spin the plane, you can fly the plane. Okay, you
have got the controls now.” And he takes his arms off and I’ve got the controls. “Just keep that
line and that line lined up.”
So I hang on.
He says, “You can relax.”
“No I can’t – I’m flying this plane.”
And I am safe because I am with my son and my son is a superb teacher. Like the eagle parent
he teaches little by little by little.
He has taught me to ski, to ride a quad bike. It’s no good giving your children wings and then
never enjoying some of the adventure. They are not really going to believe that you believe in
what they are doing.
Probably I am saying these things to you because it has been said we preach what we most need
to hear. And I most need to hear this. I have to surrender my children every day to soar on
eagle’s wings. It is not overnight and it’s dealt with and “Good, God, You have got all this
covered.”
No, it’s daily. “God You know where they are, You know what You are doing, You know who
they are with, You know how far they are in the sky, You know if they are tumbling out of the
sky.”
It’s my place to let them go to discover God’s strength under their wings. It is not my place to
stand in their way.
Mother’s Day – 2012 – Hilary Price Page 16 And the father eagle watches his baby learn to fly and he hovers above – hovers above praying,
praying, praying, standing, waiting, watching for your child, praying for your child.
There are many storms going on in the world and we can hide like the turkeys under the hut or
we can say we want to be a part of this; we want to fly into the storm.
You remember when Jesus looked over Jerusalem and there was a storm coming and He said,
“Oh Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how I have longed to gather you like a hen gathers its chicks but you
would not.”
Of course Jesus understands a mother’s heart. Of course He knows how hard this is to let go.
But you don’t gather your children for a whole lifetime; you gather them to teach them, to shelter
them for a while so that they can go out into the storm.
I wonder how you would describe your family. I wonder if you would describe yourselves as
eagles or turkeys sheltering under the barnyard.
We don’t have to flap; we have to soar. And it’s in the storm that the eagle is caught by the wind
and taken up to the second heaven. It’s not when the storm isn’t happening. Then they soar
much lower.
I wonder if you are releasing your children. And if you are releasing them with limits (“you can
go there, but not there; you can do that but not that; you can go so far but no further”).
And what about you? What about those of us who have never had children? What about those
of us who have had children and they have flown? What if your identity is so wrapped up in that
child that when they have gone you have nothing left? And actually you have been hanging on
to them not for their sake but for your sake because you really don’t know who you are without
your little brood all around you.
Well, you too, and I too, can soar on eagles’ wings. Sadly many adults don’t. They come to a
point when they think that ministry in life and soaring on eagles’ wings is for young ones. Listen
to what Psalm 103:5 says, how does the older eagle renew its strength? God says,
“It is God who satisfies your desires with good things so that your youth is renewed like
the eagle’s.”
We all have a youth within us that can be renewed like the eagle’s. And a time of renewal is
necessary for every child of God. When eagles soar in the air they are clean. They are the
cleanest of birds. They were never meant to stay on the ground. When they stay in captivity
they become the dirtiest of birds.
And all of us in our relationship with God need to keep being cleaned. “Unless I wash you,”
Jesus said “you have no part in Me.”
Mother’s Day – 2012 – Hilary Price Page 17 You don’t get washed once and it’s all done. You are clean but you still need to keep being
clean. Repentance keeps you young.
Peter resisted the washing and Jesus said, “Unless I wash you…”
How can our youth be renewed like the eagle’s? When eagles are about 60 years old, they go
through a renewal process. They find a secret place high in the mountains and they begin to
claw at their face and tear out the feathers that have been damaged over the years.
Are you lugging around damaged feathers? You won’t be flying if you are. It claws all its filth
away from it and it bleeds.
And I have heard that while that process goes on, the other eagles circle and watch and drop
food. That’s the body of Christ while you are going through this process. It is necessary for the
eagle to do this to renew its strength. If it didn’t do this it would not be able to live to its 70 or
120 years.
We need to be continually cleaned in our relationship with God. I wonder if you really believe
there is still timing for you, there is still an updraft. I wonder if you are waiting on the rock to
die or if you are waiting on the rock to fly.
Eagles are very unusual when they die. They have a premonition. They go by themselves to a
rock face. They fasten onto it with their talons and they look straight at the sun and they die. An
amazing picture.
You have probably seen some eagles die - amazing old Christian men and Christian women who
have had their talons on the rock looking to the sun as they die with dignity.
And hopefully you are on the rock not waiting to die but to fly because you are still waiting for
the updraft. Your will and God’s are still meshing together where you sense, “now” and you
step in and you find yourself flying because only God – apart from Him we can do nothing.
When the storm breaks and the violent winds lash the earth, they carry the eagle aloft to unscaled
heights above the storm clouds.
Do you know that place or are you the turkey saying, “Don’t go away – I don’t like the rain
beating on the roof.”
It is Mother’s Day and I have spoken a little about mothers but actually I have spoken about all
of us discovering who we were created to be in God, and never running out of that discovery,
which goes on until the day we die.
We talked about releasing our children to be all they were created to be.
And I am going to finish with a tribute to mothers and grandmothers. Let me show you an
extraordinary video of my mother and the grandmother of my children.
Mother’s Day – 2012 – Hilary Price Page 18 My mom is 82 this year. To celebrate being 80 she did a parachute jump to raise funds for
cancer research. (You can see what cloth I am cut from.)
This is my mother who taught me and she taught her grandchildren to soar on eagles’ wings.
And she always encouraged me to see life as an adventure. You see my mom – she gave me
roots and she gave me wings but she could not provide the wind under my wings. Only the Holy
Spirit could do that.
And not knowing what it meant for me to be a Christian and not understanding the life I chose
when I was 19, she encouraged me to soar on eagles’ wings and find the wind beneath my wings.
And you will see on this film, my mom cannot fly through the air at 80 miles an hour by herself,
as an 80 year old, or 100 miles an hour, whatever they did.
I can’t soar by myself. “Apart from Me you can do nothing.”
My mom, apart from the one she is attached to can do nothing. She abides in him, she rests in
him (you will see him).
And God asks me to do the same. Rest, rest in His Spirit and find myself soaring on eagles’
wings.
Just enjoy this clip.
Let’s pray together – makes me sad – but let’s pray together.
Heavenly Father, Thank You that You have invited us into an adventure in life. You have
invited us to soar on wings as eagles and that means resting on the wind currents. Thank You
that You have given us Your Holy Spirit. You promise “never will I leave you, never will I
forsake you”. And Lord, You have called some of us to the uttermost parts of the earth and we
need to soar on eagles’ wings. You have called some of us to just walk across the street and that
needs us to soar on eagles’ wings.
Whatever it is, Lord, I pray that we as individuals would wait on the rock, would allow our will
to be woven into Your will and then to sense the move of Your Spirit and to lean into it and
allow You to carry us to where You want us to go to make us who You want us to be.
And as parents, God, forgive us for holding too tightly to our children; may we surrender them.
In Jesus’ Name, Amen.
Mother’s Day – 2012 – Hilary Price Page 19