Deuteronomy 32:11 - Soaring with God

God took personal responsibility for the people of Israel. He chose them out of all the people on the earth to be His redeemed people. After He delivered them from Egypt, He took the pain to develop them so that they would bear characteristics that would mark them out as His unique people. Looking back at their journey, one would realize that God could have taken them through a shorter route into the promised land. But He did not. He took them via a longer route and allowed them to go through some discomfort in the journey to toughen them. Many a time, they would stumble into difficult situations and when they could not bear it any longer, God would come to their rescue. Had they been more sensitive to God’s dealings, they would have realized how gracious God had been with them. Had they appropriated the lessons God intended for them through every tough situation in their journey, they would be strengthened to face life’s challenges in the journey ahead.  

In four short and terse lines, Deuteronomy 32:11 encapsulates how God trained His people through the uncomfortable moments of their journey. Here Moses uses the illustration of how an eagle trains its eaglets to fly. To force eaglets to fly, an eagle would stir up the nest to make it uncomfortable for its eaglets. The eaglets would then be forced out of the nest hurling down the cliff. As they were hurling down, they would be forced to stretch their wings and try to fly. Before the eaglets would crash to the ground, the eagle would come underneath each of them with its outstretched wings to catch the falling eaglets. This process would be repeated until the eaglets learned how to use their own wings and fly. Like that eagle, God allowed the hard moments of life to train and toughen His children to face their future. When their hard moments became unbearable, God would come to their rescue and carry them on His wings.

In this verse, we learn that God’s intention in every experience we encounter in life is to train us to be able to face our future. God has a glorious end for each one of us. He needs to prepare us to be able to handle every moment that we will have to encounter. The Christian life is an intentional, continuous journey, a process for us to become more and more like Christ. Those are divine moments where God wants to deal with our old nature, with the aim to replace them with a Christlike nature. Our responses to what happens to us will help shape our character and keep us dependent on Him. God will allow us to go through many of such moments till we are shaped progressively to become the people He wants us to be. God is developing us with every encounter we face. There can be no better way than to yield to Him totally in every circumstance of life. Learn to soar with God!