WINGS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26748, 17 April 1948, Page 2

WINGS

THEIR POWER TO LIFT US Written for the Otago Daily Times By the Rev. Gardner Miller I suppose every one of us has, at times, wished we had wings. Especially on grey days, when everything is a burden and we don't do anything right, and most things we have to do twice over, there comes the longing for wings to fly away from it all and get some peace from the constant nag of daily life. It is a‘ very human failing, but it never lifts us off the pavement —until we learn a very simple secret—the secret of living in two worlds at the same time. The next spare half-hour that comes your way—and it will come if you have learned the att of making the clock your servant and not your master—rget hold of your Bible and look up all the references there to wings. I promise you an exhilarating 30 minutes. You will read of eagles wings, dragons’ wings, the wings of the morning, the wings of the wind, the wings of a dove, and as you read you will feel yourself being lifted up on wings of meditation, of hope and maybe of ecstasy. There is no better refreshment on a grey day than to take your wings out of the Bible, put them on, and find the leaden weights drop off your feet. The trouble with most of us is that we yearn for wings, but don’t know where to find them. But to some there has often come the experience of being lifted up and carried away on wings. The author and the preacher know this precious experience, and to them it is something that can never be bartered. A tired woman comes home and finds her little girl has put a few flowers in a vase beside a cup of hot tea, and immediately her tiredness goes and she is lifted up on the wings of tenderness. On a dull day, such as it is to-day, to be told, as I was, of a preacher in a little church deep in the South Island/ loneliness who took one of my Daily! Times articles into his pulpit and preached from it lifted me up on wings that carried me beyond my room where I am a prisoner for a time. Wings yes, there are lots of wings for us all, but you will never find them by grumbling and moaning. Creatures of Two Worlds

The inescapable fact is that we are all creatures of two worlds. If you can recall the poem of George Herbert where he speaks of how weariness may drive us to His breast, you will see where the poet with his precious insight puts his finger on the wonderful truth that divinity is the other side of humanity. And perhaps you will recall the famous—and gloriousstatement of Augustine: “Thou hast made us for Thyself and our heart is restless until it rests in Thee.” Even the lowest and the lowliest as well as the great and mighty are linked with an Otherness that, while it makes us discontented with our poor achievements here, also reminds us that we were never meant to find happiness within a material environment. No man was ever born a rationalist or an atheist. And I sometimes think that men who are any of these —and I know some splendid men who are one or. the other—are what they are in spite of, indeed in inward defiance of, a disposition that has affinities with a spiritual life they will not even acknowledge to themselves. Wings and weights are our heritage, \but it is up to us to see to it that our wings are strong enough to overcome the drag of the weights. The tragdy with many men and women is that they deliberately clip their wings. The men who scoff at prayer, the women who have no time, as they say, for “church-going prigs,” are. doing very serious damage to the delicate fabric of their souls. They do not doubt they have souls; often they show a very tearful and frightened disposition when the, grey fingers of disease grip them. You can’t deny your spiritual side without finding, one day, that you can’t lift your weighted feet from the trouble that holds you like wet clay. Often it is trouble and dismay, and what we would call sheer misfortune, that make us realise that we are creatures of two worlds. The Jews long ago in exile found it so. One of their great prophets, a young man called Ezekiel, in a most amazing symbolical picture on the first page of his book, indicates this very thing. “And they had the hands of a man under their wings.” I never read that without feeling carried away. Wings and hands, divinity and humanity, dreams and reality, hope and work, heaven and earth joined together. That makes man. Without the combination life has no meaning and death is a Hurry end. No one ever so gloriously revealed this truth of man’s two-fold nature as Jesus did. He was perfectly at home in both worlds, and to follow in His steps is to learn the secret that makes the commonplace an off-shoot of the divine. His times of prayer were not only times when He was lifted into the heavenlies, they were also times when He received strength to withstand the urge to run away, and the struggle brought bloody sweat to His brow. Yes, there are times when the wings are folded, not because they have forgotten how to fly away, but because it is necessary to show the others that we do not fly from unmerited suffering but take it to our hearts and are wounded. Broken Pinions

I have a friend who is fond of singing the hymn, “the bird with the broken pinion shall never fly so high again.” When he sings it for me at any of my meetings, and I look over those present and see many who have made a mess of their lives, I feel how true the hymn is. But I have never known any broken man or woman who lost altogether the power of rising. A middle-aged woman came to see me lately. She had suffered a terrible shock and was prostrated and full of the grief that leads to self pity. Life had now no meaning for her and she wished herself dead. I think I shall always remember the smile on her face when, after a long time of Unburdening, and then a time of silence before God, she accepted Christ as her burden-bearer. We rose from our knees, she on wings, I with a serenity that always comes to me when I have led a burdened man or woman to Christ, and in broken words she tried to tell me how she felt. The loss is still there, and the awful loneliness of her life, but it is now shared. Her life is now definitely lived m two W One S 'day the crippling thing that has kept is from achieving the meals we set out to make realities will be removed and we shall soar. Let me close this article by reminding you that m vour times of prayer, especially when you are “listening,” not talking, you will know the power of the wings.