Is God Stirring Your Nest?

    Last Saturday, Linda and I, along with Erica and Brock, made the short trip to Starved Rock on the Illinois River. Besides a lot of Indian legends and French explorer/trader stories, the place is known for its habitat of Bald Eagles. They nest in the high trees atop rocky cliffs along the river. There is something inspirational about seeing eagles in the wild. Seeing them on top of their nests is an extra thrill.
    But while I’ve seen eagles’ nests in the wild from below, I’ve never seen one from above, except for those that had been preserved and relocated to a display case, as in the visitor center at the state park. From below, the nest looks gnarly and prickly, with jagged chunks of sharp sticks and rocks poking through. It makes you wonder now comfortable it possibly could be. But that’s from below. From above, looking inside the nest, it looks altogether different. The mother eagle lines the inside with feathers and soft fur from animals it had preyed upon, so when the young eaglets hatch, they have a comfortable warm bed to snuggle into, sleep, eat and grow.
    But as the young eagles begin to mature, the mother starts to “stir the nest.” With her talons and beak, she pulls at the fur and feathers, letting some of the sticks poke through. As the weeks go by, she does this more and more, making the nest uncomfortable for the eaglets, so that along with her increased prodding, when the time is right, they get uncomfortable enough that they eventually leave the nest to a new freedom that they could otherwise have never experienced.
    I heard someone say almost ten years ago, “Comfort is the enemy of growth,” and I adopted it as a saying of mine to help others in difficult situations. I, as you, like to be comfortable. Sometimes it takes God’s poking and prodding, stirring the nest in my surroundings, to get me to move out from what I’m familiar with in order to experience greater things he has for me. When we get too comfortable, we get complaisant. God wants all of us to be in a continual state of growth, and that means having to go through  regular and often difficult stages of change in our environment. It feels uncaring early on, but in the long run, it’s God’s love for us that pokes and prods and causes the discomfort that makes us move out of our comfort zone and into new ways to be all that he created us to be.
    So if you are getting comfortable, enjoy it for a while, but just know that because God loves you, he’s going to bring about some changes in your life so that you can experience it to it’s fullest: to be all you can be and serve in other ways you otherwise never would be able to. As you feel the stirring of the nest, know that God has new heights he wants you to soar. It’ll take some risk on your part and along the way you’ll have to make some leaps of faith to get those wings doing what they’re supposed to do, but it sure beats spending your whole life stuck in a stick bowl on top of a cold rocky cliff.