"You are meant for so much more "

Intelligent living. Intelligent life. “Any intelligent life out there?” we hear folks ask. Usually they’re making reference to other galaxies or planets, but I wonder if we shouldn’t be asking the question of this planet...of our own lives. Are we really demonstrating intelligent living?

Chuck Swindoll tells a story taken from Native American folklore about an Indian brave who found an eagle’s egg. The brave could not climb up to the eagle’s nest, but he wanted to save the baby eagle inside, so he placed the egg in a prairie chicken’s nest. The prairie hen sat on the eggs, and eventually, they all hatched: a handful of prairie chicks...and one little eaglet. Not surprisingly, the eaglet grew up like a prairie chicken, grubbing for worms and never flying more than a few feet off the ground. But one day as an old bird, he saw an eagle soaring in the sky, its wings spread wide to catch the wind. This old eagle asked a prairie chicken friend what kind of bird that was, and the friend said, “Well, that’s a mighty eagle—the most magnificent bird in all the world. But don’t think much about him, because eagles have nothing to do with you and me. We’ll never fly that way.” So the changeling eagle lived out the rest of his life earth-bound...with wings that were made to fly.

Isn’t that tragic? But aren’t we like that changeling eagle? We were meant to fly in relationship to the Lord Jesus Christ, but we’ve traded His power and His strength for hum-drum lives that can offer us little. Is there intelligent life down here?