WORD OF THE WEEK

AS I was walking to work recently I nearly caused an accident. It’s not that I stepped out into the traffic or tripped up a dog walker or anything of the sort. No – I nearly stepped on a small creature.

It was a big, fat, furry bumble bee waddling slowly down the pavement.

Now it may have had a perfectly good reason for being ‘on foot’ so to speak. But if I had wings I could beat at 200 times each second, if I could soar high above the traffic and noise, and out of the way of people’s size 11 feet – I would definitely do it.

In my ‘kit’ for school assemblies I have a rubber egg. It looks just like the real thing – but if you drop it it bounces rather than making a horrible mess. Every once in a while I get it out and tell the story of the chicken-eagle... which runs something like this.

Once upon a time there was a little farm nestling in the bottom of a steep-sided valley. High up on one of the mountain tops was an eagle’s nest with four shiny eggs in it.

One day an egg fell out of the nest, and rolled all the way down through the heather, bracken and long grass on the mountainside, until at last it rolled under the fence and into the farm yard. There a hen saw it, nudged it into her nest and hatched it.

The eagle grew up in the farmyard alongside all the other chickens the hen hatched.

Although it was bigger than the others, and seemed to be a different shape, it thought nothing of it.

Some days as it was scratching in the farmyard it would look up and see the other eagles from the nest whirling and diving in the sky and sigh.

Having no idea it was not actually a chicken and not knowing it could fly – it stayed forever earthbound. To me, having faith is all about realising your full potential as a human being.

However you interpret the idea of humankind being made in God’s image – it must mean that we are capable of truly great things and rising above the ordinary, surely?

I think that’s what Jesus meant when he talked about giving people “life in all its fullness”.

When all is said and done, I don’t want to end up like a chicken eagle or a bumble bee – walking when I could soar!