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There’s an old story about a farmer who found an eagle’s egg. He let a mother hen sit on it until it hatched. It grew up with other chicks thinking it was a chicken. One day, he tried to get the eagle to fly by throwing it into the air. It would not fly, because it thought it was a chicken. Finally, the farmer took it to a high mountain. He held the eagle so it could span the horizon. As it did so, it rediscovered its eagle nature and flew off into the sky. We read in John 6 where Jesus was sharing truth about the nature of life, about God, and how we can truly know God. But the people were like the eagle that thought they were chickens. They could not grasp what Jesus said. So Jesus broke the truth on down for them. He said, “I am the Bread that gives life;” “I am the water that gives life. Those who come to me will never be hungry again; those who believe in me will never be thirsty again.” Some people still missed His teaching — they did not grasp the meaning of His concrete language to express spiritual truth. In fact, Jesus transforms us from the inside out when we come to Him in simple faith. We discover that God did not mean for us to be chickens that pick corn in a barnyard to survive. He adopts us into His family when we humbly and ask Him to do it. He changes us and empowers us to be what we could never be without Him.
