Image by Flash Alexander from Pixabay

Somewhere in Africa, a hunter returning home spies in a rocky place a large nest of branches on which lies a beautiful egg spotted with red. Still warm from the mother bird who will soon come back.

Curious, the man examines the nest. Delighted at his discovery, he slips the egg into his pocket to take it to his house to hatch. Since yesterday, there is a hen sitting on her eggs in a corner of his kitchen. The big egg will find its place among the chicken eggs, under the mother hen.

Then comes the day of hatching: one by one, the chicks with yellow down come out of their shells. Among them, a big one, already covered with almost white feathers! Wow!
To see him pecking with the others, jostling between them to get the mash as best he can, you would take him for a young chicken.

But look up. Is that an eagle flying over the chicken coop? At the sound of his wings, a shiver of terror passes over the village. At his raucous cry there is general panic in all the yards, the dogs bark, the pigs hide, the cows moo. Roosters and hens cackle; all the chicks rush instinctively to find cover under the wing of their mother.

The danger? What danger? Alone outside while the raptor is soaring above, he has not moved, our big chick. Far from being frightened, he lifts his head. Motionless, neck extended, he listens. It seems that he recognizes the call, this one. The eaglet! Oh yes! So well adapted to this backyard life for which he was not made, he alone hears the call. The eagles up there, with their piercing eyes, also spot him, far below, in the yard of a hunter, under the banana trees.

Every time they make their rounds, his eagle gaze scans the sky. Until the day, his wings having grown, a large bird emerges from the clouds and begins to descend towards him in gliding flight.

Then, crying with joy, the young eagle rises towards the sun.

– adapted from a story in Les bananiers du miracle, by Flora Quintin. © 1987 Réalités de la foi, Montreux, Switzerland.

So here we are, cooped up in the chicken yard, other chickens around us crying “The sky is falling! The sky is falling!” We are here, but our home is not here. May we remember that.

But they that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint. (Isaiah 40:31)