Life Talk

No Looking Back

Scripture: Philippians 3:13-14, Luke 9:62

Devotional: 
Ornithologists who've spent their lives watching birds of prey have documented something almost every hawk, falcon, and buzzard does without fail. In the moment of the strike, right before and right after, the bird glances back over its shoulder. It's instinct. Hunting is dangerous work, and even the hunter has to make sure it isn't being hunted.

Every bird of prey does this.

Except one.

The eagle does not look back.

In the exact moment of greatest vulnerability, the strike itself, the eagle commits fully forward. No hedge. No backward glance. No divided attention. Just total, undivided focus on what's ahead.

That's what separates an eagle from every other bird that flies. And it's what separates a believer who merely survives from a believer who actually soars.

Paul understood this. Sitting in his own history, the persecution he'd caused, the man he used to be, he made a decision: "this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark" (Philippians 3:13-14). Jesus said it even more bluntly: “no one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the Kingdom” (Luke 9:62).

Here's the hard truth hiding in this metaphor, you cannot mount up with wings as eagles while you're still looking over your shoulder. Not at what hurt you. Not at who failed you. Not at what you lost, or who you used to be before it all happened.

Make up your mind to be forward focused. No looking back.

Reflection:
What do you keep looking back at? (the loss, wound, or failure)
What would it look like this week to commit forward the way the eagle does, fully, without the hedge?