Eagles and straight furrows

The boy was worried about being able to plow in a straight line. His father told him to pick a post or a tree at the far end of the field and aim for it. His furrow would be straight.

He laughed as he told the story many years later. He said, “I had such bad eyesight, and this was before my family could purchase eyeglasses for me. My furrow was terrible. I had no idea that the post I thought I was aiming for was a cow.”

My problem this morning is about goals too, only the one I have is fixed and firm not wandering about like a cow. My problem is fatigue and feeling like quitting. Days of hard work, not sleeping well last night, and being stuffed up from allergies had my head on my desk this morning asking the Lord to give me what I needed to hear today. This is what I read:

But Jesus said to him, “No one, having put his hand to the plow, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God.” (Luke 9:62)

I first thought that this is for a slightly different problem. This person Jesus speaks to was hesitating about following Him, while I’ve already made that decision. However, I am looking back in a sense; I want to ease up, stop plowing. Making furrows, straight or wavy, is labor intensive and like the disciples who went back to their fishing after Jesus died, I feel like going back to the easy stuff before Christ got me into this.

Oh, I know I won’t do it. The sense of wanting to quit was worse one day this week, only that time it was spiritual war where the enemy was hard at it trying to convince me that I was useless. In the end, I simply had to ignore his thoughts and get to work. Today, my body is convincing me that I am just too tired and my head is not very clear.

The Holy Spirit reminds me of two verses, “Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall, but those who wait on the Lord Shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint” (Isaiah 40:30-31).

Eagles are incredible. I once watched them soaring over the Kenai river mouth in Alaska. One was being pestered by a raven. The raven flew at him, closer and closer. At one point the eagle seemed to convulse, curling up in what looked like pain. I thought the raven had injured it, but it wasn’t the eagle that was injured. Its talons hit their mark and the raven dropped from the sky.

The memory of it plus these verses encourage me that God has strength for me that I have not yet experienced. I’m tired and sleep will help, but waiting on Him is not about having a nap. It is about having a confident expectation that He will take care of both my physical and spiritual fatigue. It is about keeping my eye on Him, tired or not, and making a straight line toward my immovable and firm goal.

These verses are more than enough, yet the first lines of today’s reading tell me that God isn’t interested in my complaining either. They say, “I have never met a successful, influential person in any realm of enterprise who was not committed to reaching goals. The people who influence the world are pursuers, competitors, and winners, preoccupied with goals rather than having their own needs met.”

Sleep will happen at the right time, but for this morning I need to press on.