Home Page >> Sermon Index >> May 6, 2007

“Learning to Fly”

Good morning. For those of you who don’t know me, my name is Evan Paul. I’m a senior at Wilton High School, and I’ve been a member of this church for the last four years. As a graduating senior, I will soon be leaving Wilton to attend College where I’ll have to “apply myself, pursue my own interests, and use good judgment.” At least that’s what everyone tells me. Yet, the thought of leaving the only home I’ve known for more than eighteen years seems overwhelming sometimes. It often seems as though I’m leaving the shelter of my family and friends, the shelter of Wilton, CT, and the shelter of this Church that I’ve been apart of for the last four years.

The first lesson for today talked about the Lord shielding his followers from danger and guiding them through their lives. Of course, all of us as Christians have heard countless times that the Lord guides us and shelters us from danger. But after being a member of this Church for 4 years and as a young adult, I’ve often wondered what exactly is the Lord’s guidance? How do I experience the guiding hand of the Lord that I hear about every Sunday? If it’s not a little voice inside my head that tells me what to do and what not to do, then what is it? And more importantly, if the Lord is our protector and our guardian against evil, how can such atrocities as war, murder, disease, genocide, and terrorism exist? Does God turn a blind eye to his people? These are all questions I’ve asked myself quite often as I’ve learned about Christianity.

Probably the best explanation and elaboration of “God’s Guidance” came to me while on a hiking trip three summers ago. After hiking through the woods and up and down mountains and hills for seven hours every day, there was nothing better than sitting down and reading a book. And of course, me being the slow reader, I picked out what was called “a fast read” by my friends; Dan Brown’s Angels and Demons. Needless to say, it was a very strange title in which to find a message about God. The message was this: the Lord guides all of us…but in a limited way. Let me explain.

For example, consider a young toddler growing up with two loving parents. The parents love him very dearly, and always vow to protect him from pain and suffering. However, when that toddler learns to ride a bike, the parents don’t hold his hand for his entire bike ride. Rather, they let him ride the bike on his own, and they even let him fall down as he learns. He scrapes his knee, and perhaps complains, but this is part of the learning process. If the parents held his hand the entire time, he wouldn’t learn how to ride the bike in the first place.

Angels and Demons told me that the Lord is the same way. Just as the parents let their child fall and scrape his knee so that he learns from his mistake, the Lord lets us have our fights, our wars, and our pain in hope that we will learn from our mistakes. This is perhaps one of the greatest and most enlightening lessons I’ve ever learned from anyone. God is our protector. God is our guidance. But God will let us make our own mistakes and perhaps go down dark roads. And when we find ourselves down these dreaded roads, we turn back to God for guidance. Just as the Lord’s Prayer says, he delivers us from evil.

Similarly, as Deuteronomy taught us in the first lesson this morning, “As an eagle stirs up its nest, and hovers over its young; as it spreads its wings, takes them up, and bears them aloft on its pinions, The Lord alone guided him.” When a baby eagle learns to fly, its mother flies with the baby on her back, and then suddenly swoops out from under it, forcing it to learn to fly on its own. The baby will undoubtedly fall at first, and the mother will catch it. But after the third or fourth try, the baby will finally learn to fly on its own. If the mother never left the baby, and flew underneath it forever, the baby eagle would never learn to fly. This is why God sometimes seems to drop out from under us at times. He is allowing us to learn how to fly on our own.

As strange as it may sound, I think of the church and my community here in Wilton as the mother eagle. For the last eighteen years, the eagle has flown beneath me, guiding me through life. Whenever I’ve had a problem or struggled through something, my community has been there to support me like a mother eagle supporting her child. Now, as I Graduate high school and prepare to begin College away from home, the eagle will drop out from beneath me, and I will learn to fly on my own.

The communion anthem that we will hear later seems appropriately titled “On Eagle’s Wings.” The lyrics of the song say so gracefully: “And he will raise you up on Eagle’s wings, bear you on the breath of dawn, and he will make you to shine like the sun, and hold you in the palm of his hand. You need not fear the terror of the night, nor the arrow that flies by day…For, to his angels; he’s given a command to guard you in all of your ways. Upon their hands, they will bear you up…”

For eighteen years, Him, my family, my friends, my teachers, my coworkers, my community…and this congregation have born me up. And now I am finally ready to graduate, and enter the world as a young adult. I am finally ready to learn to fly.