Unflappable

I was straightening up the front garden the other day, when I heard crows cawing in the distance. I love watching the crows in autumn, when they gather in flocks (technically called a “murder”) in trees, crowing and cawing loudly to each other. They usually gather around nut trees or some other food source, calling for one and all to join in on the feasting festivities. I call it a Crow Party!

So I looked up from what I was doing and scanned the horizon, looking through the tops of trees for the crows. I found them flying just over some of the tallest trees in the neighborhood, but they weren’t exhibiting typical Crow Party behavior. Instead they were flying up and around, darting back and forth at something. Slowly they worked their way above the tree line, and I saw there were about a dozen of them, swooping, darting, crowing loudly, almost angrily at…what?

And then…out of the middle of the pack…soared a hawk, wings outstretched, gliding majestically through the air in breath-taking beauty…crows flying at him, constantly in attack mode. They yelled, cawed, darted, swooped, doing everything they could to intimidate the larger stronger bird…but nothing fazed him. He kept his wings stable and fixed, his eyes somehow able to see an invisible thermal on which he could soar and glide with very little effort…never even taking a single stroke of the wings.

These odd aerial antics continued on…over our house…high above trees…moving slowly to the west…following a course that only the hawk knew to take. Try as they might, the crows’ relentless pursuit would not get him off target. He didn’t let anything deter him from his purpose, which only he and his Creator knew. And with all this taking place around him, the hawk never once flapped his wings.

Undaunted…unfazed…unflappable.

This is how God wants me to live.

Some days feel like I have crows all around me, darting, swooping, doing everything they can to take my eyes off of my Lord. I know I have an enemy that does not want me to focus on Jesus or God’s purpose or will for me, but to be distracted…to focus instead on the problems and challenges that seem to constantly come my way.

But, like this hawk, I need to fix my eyes “not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.”

Like this hawk, I want to run with perseverance the race marked out for me, and fix my eyes on Jesus, who, though unseen, is more real than any unseen thermal or wind current.

Trusting in His presence and power, I too can be undaunted.

Unfazed.

Unflappable.

2 Corinthians 4: 16 – 18

“Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.”