On Eagle's Wings

Two of my favorite modern Christian songs are sung by th artiste Josh Groban. One of the is titled” On Eagle's Wings” and another is titled” You lift me up”. Both these songs have lifted up my spirits on many a depressing day. The old prophet Isiah's lines promising that "they shall mount up with wings like eagles" (v. 31) are so memorable.... Sorting through my various memories I remembered first a time when I sat on top of a cliff and watched a motionless raven riding an unseen wind, occasionally folding up his wings and dropping breathlessly before extending them again to soar. Then I thought of a time when I took a s short holiday in Goa , watching seabirds get waddling starts before a breeze would lift them gently above my head.

Finally I considered a family of sparrows that once nested outside my window of my 8th floor office in Delhi's Nehru Place, occasionally breaking into the silence of my room with a salutary song. None of these light and dreamy images worked with me, however. Not this week.
As a pacifist, I have struggled a great deal with my own feelings about the violent turns being taken in our country , some more graphic than others. One illustration that I recently read about and that horrified me was the thought of Phulpur in Uttar Pradesh that once returned Jawaharlal Nehru to Parliament , now being represented by a mafia don. . Sometimes I am quite guilty of reading the morning newspaper and taking it to heart, making it personal. As i read all that i do , I also sad realize that I have very little power to counter the ominous movements around me. Some times, I feel tired and angry and sad and confused, I walk on the frightening border of hopelessness at times.

So some airy notions of birds taking flight are sometimes hard to embrace as I feel more the albatross of cynicism growing heavier around my neck, worrying less about my own ability to fly and fretting more honestly that I might instead just sink like a stone. And in a rather uncommon way as I read Josh Groban's songs based on Isaiah , I felt that someone from a very long time ago was saying something to me, pleading desperately that I not lose heart. All I can say is that I want very much to hear those words and to believe in them.

The words that seem to be speaking so deeply are drawn from Isaiah 40, an entire chapter that is made of the dialog between hope and doubt before it ends on a note that asks us each to remain engaged in the struggle. It was written ages ago to a people that had been living in exile and, during that time, found themselves in the tension between their own hopes and doubts, the promises of their faith and the sad social context in which they lived. This is the audience that the author of Isaiah 40 is addressing, and it is to a tired and skeptical people that he offers his word. Some of his chapters intended to comfort a weary people by reminding them of an old vision and singing of a new empowerment. There are some hopeful words here, if not any easy words, and perhaps that is why they can still speak as strongly in the present as they did in that long ago past. So to an exiled people the prophet begins to speak or maybe even to anybody who has ever felt like a wanderer, caught in the troubles of this world and its sorrows, feeling the bitterness between what we dream and what we have got.

It seems to me that the prophet knows the feeling all too well, because his opening lines, which read very much like poetry, acknowledge under their surface that things are not yet as they should be. "A voice cries out," he writes, "In the wilderness prepare the way, make straight in the desert a highway [so] every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low; the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain." (v. 3-4) The voice crying out is really the voice of the old writer, who is beginning to offer an image of a time just around some corner when things might be transformed. While the author understands that the current context is oftentimes a painful one, he wants to say and so he does say that the future is open. Using his words to invite us into this beautiful vision, the author paints what is uncertain in the colors of a thousand possibilities.

Unafraid to voice his dreams the prophet writes, "Then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all people shall see it together," (v. 5) which is another way of saying that the manifestation of the divine shall be everywhere and the love of God shall be shared by everyone. This is a very beautiful sentiment and, as it imagines what the world might become, it is directed rather pointedly at everyone who has, for one reason or another, stopped imagining their own hopes for the future. The Book of Isaiah has perhaps the highest hopes of all, for its pages tell that lions and lambs could one day find rest together, swords might be refashioned into ploughshares, and hospitality shall be shown to the stranger and the outcast.

And the comfort that the prophet means to offer here can be found in the universality of his statement. Not only will the people wither and fade but so will the nations and the rulers, all who act oppressively on the earth and live in violence towards it, they¹ll go too, for they are no more than "dust on the scales" (v. 15). While this may strike some as the most morbid form of encouragement, the old writer is trying to affirm that there is something more transcendent than the power structures currently in place and the systems that seem to surround us. While surely we are participants in those systems, the prophet wants to remind us that we might also become participants in something much greater, something that he would call a divine purpose. Because what won¹t fade, the old book tells, is the very word from God.

And it is that word that has always issued an invitation for us to make justice and love through our living, in the hope that we are joining in something sacred as we do it. Isaiah 40 goes on to tell of the wonder of the divine, conjuring up majestic images of God, but throughout it is still possible to hear that there is a dispirited audience listening in. It seems to me that the writer never really loses sight of this, since he concludes his magnificent descriptions by saying rather plainly that God "does not faint or grow weary." (v. 28) At the end of it the prophet will say something like, "Every one of you is tired, I know.

But maybe one day we¹ll reach the end of all our waiting, maybe one day we¹ll see that our efforts have made at least a part of this dream into reality. And maybe on a day like that we really might feel light as eagles carried by the wind¹s current. Who knows?" So as Isiah understands and acknowledges the reservations of his hearers, he still speaks strongly against the cynicism of inaction and asks us each to take the risks of responding in faith. Perhaps the aforementioned eagles might serve as an interesting example. In our lives we may not always be able to soar gracefully but we can take the first small steps and leave the nest to trust in what cannot always be seen but can be hoped in and worked for and maybe even lived out if we feel as risky as the young bird who paces and yearns for the sky.