Roots and Wings

UV 1053/10,000 Roots and Wings
"'But there was another great eagle with powerful wings and full plumage. The vine now sent out its roots toward him from the plot where it was planted and stretched out its branches to him for water.”

Ezekiel 17 v 7

The great philosopher Goethe wrote, “There are only two lasting bequests we can hope to give our children. One of these is roots, the other, wings.” Education cannot provide the roots and wings that we desire both for ourselves and our children for what it teaches as truth and fact today, is revised within a short time. The truths of one generation become the heresy of the next. Education conditions the mind to believe in the limitations of nature. It is only faith and the Word of God that can provide both the roots of the good vine and the powerful wings of the eagle. Jesus provides us the good root with many branches so that we can grow with stability as well as dynamism in the very plot where we are planted. The vine of our lives is often pruned by the Holy Spirit so that we bear many kinds of fruit, good fruit and much fruit. Our faith in Jesus and the Word roots us. Everything else in the world changes but Jesus and the Word remain the same forever. But for the Bible, our lives would have been Babel and babble. The leaves of our lives, our goals, opinions and circumstances can change or fall. But our lives are founded on solid rock. We in turn become the good root in our families, workplace and nations.
But we are not grounded for we are meant to fly like an eagle. He provides us the two powerful wings of prayer and the Word. With prayer and the Word, nothing can limit us. We can fly in the spirit across barriers, mountains, reefs, oceans, fears, obstacles, persecutions, opposition. We can fly across nations, above the highest offices and across the span of the entire universe. The full plumage that the uni-verse mentions are the golden feathers of the promises, precepts and commands of scripture that we have claimed in faith and prayer. Both our roots with all its branches and our wings with all its feathers will keep stretching towards the water that the Lord provides for the roots and the oil that the Lord provides to lubricate the wings and as it happens, the roots become stronger and grow deeper enabling us to bear even more fruit on many more branches , the wings become longer and stronger enabling us to fly even higher and longer.

When we fly with strong faith and a sanctified imagination, our hitherto limited vision expands. We can see what ‘s wrong with our world and attempt to set things right for we believe we can do all things through Christ Jesus who strengthens us. We look at everything from an eternal perspective. We are confident as we know the Lord is watching over us day and night with a mother eagle’s eye. We are living under the shadow of the Almighty and so our lives are blessed, protected, provided for, exalted, surrounded by angels. We will tread upon the lion and the cobra, trample these threats under our feet. He will be with us in trouble, deliver us and honour us. He will satisfy us with long life and after that show us our eternal salvation. The Holy Spirit hovers over the dark and grey areas of our lives and brings forth life. We are filled with hope as we can see the distant shores of heaven.
The leadership and management concept implicit in this uni-verse is that we need to strive to combine the anchorage of faith with the leverage of hope to improve our lot. We need to combine universal values contained in the Word with our vision and our day to day goals. The principles that can be evolved from this concept are: a) strengthen our faith by studying the Word b) meditate on the Word and pray as two wings of a bird need to flap together to cause flight. C) deepen our relationship with our Creator and Redeemer . The practical steps to be taken to translate these principles in our lives into real habits are: 1. Spend more time on a daily basis reading the Word, meditating and praying 2. Praying internally on different issues right through the day 3. Work daily towards using our talents or bearing more fruit in a variety of ways. 4. Increasingly use intuition, imagination and spiritual discernment to take various decisions.

Prateep V Philip