EAGLE’S NEST

I was recently asked why I call my top floor apartment my ‘Eagle’s Nest.’

Surely the only birds around are seagulls, -  not our best friends by the sea-side if we are eating fish and ships or a cornet. They are likely to swoop down and snatch it from you, however wonderful they are in flight.

Our last home we had named ‘Hafan Deg,’ Fair Haven. We had a picture of a ship coming into harbour on the panel on the front door. This was to be our forever home.

But I needed to move on before I moved up. Joel had preceded me to heaven and my health was not what it was. I was advised to consider sheltered accommodation.

With God directing my path and with the minimum of hassle, I was soon settled in this delightful sunshiny flat. It was deserving of a name.

Without thinking, I found I was referring to it as my ‘Eagle’s Nest.’

So – why Eagle’s Nest?

As children we would gather round the piano and sing with gusto. One of our favourite choruses was

          ‘They who wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength

          They shall mount up with wings as eagles.’ From Isaiah 40:31

Years later I flew from London to ‘the uttermost parts of the earth’. I was given the verse from Psalm 139 about taking the wings of the morning, and I proved God’s word, there in the Highlands of New Guinea and again when I went to Ghana, that ‘even there’ God would be with me, and indeed, he kept his promise.

So when I wrote my life story I gave it the title, ‘Wings of the Morning,’ intending a cover picture of a mission plane flying over the mountains. But God had other plans.

I asked a friend if he had a suitable photo I could use. ‘Why a plane?’ he asked. ‘Planes were significant in our lives,’ I told him, but he was a wild-life artist and generously offered for me to use his painting of an eagle, flying against a backdrop of the snow-clad mountains of Alaska.

I realised that the mission planes had only been part of one chapter in my life, whereas the eagle was still very important to  me. You see, there is a verse in Deuteronomy which speaks of the eagle stirring up its nest so that the baby eaglets would be thrust out and learn to fly. I felt  my lovely cosy nest in our ‘Fair Haven’ had been broken up. When my husband died, it would have been easy to let myself plummet to the ground and join him in heaven, but I had a call to teach the  children. I was booked into the schools and chapels. I had to learn to fly and the Divine Eagle was there, swooping to catch me in  my grief and lift me up to still ‘joy in God’ and know his strength.

That year the ‘Divine Eagle’ was the theme of the ‘Ablaze’ convention, and the ministry so meaningful in my life, and now, definitely in my old age, I continue to claim God’s promises that those who wait on the Lord will renew their  strength and mount up with wings as eagles.

Bas’s inspirational painting of the eagle now is not only on the cover of my book, *’Wings of the Morning’, but has pride of place over the fire-place in my ‘Eagle’s Nest,’ continuing to speak into my life.

My prayer is that we may all, waiting on the Lord,  rise up on wings as eagles, run and not grow weary and walk and not faint.

*’Wings of the Morning’ is available on Kindle or with Amazon.