The Eagle in the Tomb | Previous Challenge Entry

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TITLE: The Eagle in the Tomb | Previous Challenge Entry
By Stanley McMahon
10/22/14
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The Eagle in the Tomb

He was created an eagle but lived like a sparrow. Tall, strong, intelligent and eagle-like in his attributes, the youth cowered with fear before fresh challenges. Beaten out of him in his childhood, crushed like a grape by searing words, his desire to fly to the heights for which he was created was all but extinguished.

Safety had become his haven and his prison. Familiar surroundings were a source of comfort and justification for his sparrow choices in life. “Everybody lives like this; it’s normal!” The eagle in him had all but died, tortured by the horrendous javelins of reinforced failure. “You can’t do anything!” “You’re useless! You’ll never fly, so don’t expect to.” The purpose for which he’d been made had been laid in a tomb and a great stone rolled over it. Dark, cold, musty and isolated, he lay motionless, convinced that his surroundings were permanent. His identity as an eagle was barely a memory.

As he lay there a word was blown in through a crack in the rock. “What are you doing here?” “I’m a sparrow,” said he. “I’m supposed to be here.” Another word followed. A storm was brewing outside the tomb. “You don’t look like a sparrow, who told you that?” “But I am! I am! Just go away and leave me alone! You’re disturbing my sleep.”

But still the words kept on coming and the force of them brought warmth and light into the tomb. The crack was getting bigger. The youth was struggling, his head swirling with the light, dizzy with the challenge of these thoughts.
“You’re an eagle, you know.”
“So why can’t I soar?”
“Because you’re stuck in here. There’s no room in this tomb.”
“Who are you anyway?”
“I am the Word of Life. I have come to set you free. Free from this tomb of yours; free to be who I made you to be.”

The eagle sat up and stretched his wings, still startled and confused by the entry of light. As he got up, he looked down at his once straggly legs and found new strength in them. He looked up and around him and things were somehow getting brighter all the time. He realised that not only was the light diffusing the darkness, it was destroying the tomb.

“I am come that you might have life, and have it more abundantly.” He was beginning to enjoy this. “It was for freedom that Christ has set us free.” He stretched again, this time letting the wind catch the full span of his wings. “I can do all things through Christ who continually infuses strength into me.” The eagle looked down from the heights, almost too distant to hear the last whispers from the Word of Life who stood where the tomb had once been, beaming with radiant joy:

“Those who wait on the Lord shall rise up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint.”

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