Dear Unity Friend,

Have you been watching the Decorah eagles? If not join the thousands of us who are watching them, hourly, daily and or weekly. Click here, or cut and paste this address into your web browser to join the party: http://www.ustream.tv/decoraheagles . You wont regret it!

A camera has been positioned right beside the nest in Decorah, Iowa, where each year a male and female eagle has returned to the nest to raise their young. People I know have spent hours watching the eagle parents take turns sitting above their three eaglets. Habitual viewers can tell you whether it is the male or the female eagle, they can tell you what the eaglets ate today. Viewers tell eagle stories to each other in the workplace, like the eaglets are their own kids. “ Did you see the mother feeding the dead rat to the young? Isn’t it amazing that the mother did not eat any of that small-mouth bass for herself?”

The way an eagle raises its’ young is amazing. The Decorah video cements that. Did you know that when an eaglet is old enough to fly the parent pushes the eaglet out of the nest? To go from feeding the eaglet food, without eating any of it, to pushing the eaglet out of a tall tree. The eagle parent must be wired to be an amazing animal of faith in our God. And that got me thinking of high school.

We are about to push our graduates out of the nest. In a sense, Unity has been an important part of a nest. We have nurtured these 18 year olds, fed them kept them safe from dangerous ideas. We have pointed to all of life surrounding their nest and told them it all belongs to God. "Train up a child in the way he should go, And when he is old he will not depart from it." (Proverbs 22:6)

We make the push out of the nest in faith; there is no fear in crashing. We make the push in faith because Jesus Christ has made it possible to leave the nest. We are free to fly. In this season of lent, we can rest in faith that Jesus meant it when He said, “It is finished”. We are free to fly because of Jesus. Enjoy your kids while you still have them in your nest, and trust the future they have in Jesus Christ. He has made it possible to fly.