In the cool recess of the garage on a warm southern
California spring day, my Dad coached me in the construction of a kite. Every spring,
Emerson elementary school had a kite-flying competition with prizes for all
sorts of categories: biggest, prettiest, highest flyer, etc. I was eager to
enter, hoping to win.
We started with tying two bits of balsa wood together in the
form of a cross. The cross was foundational. We stretched tissue paper over the
form, decorated it, and then Mom appeared with some old rags. I thought they
would ruin it, make it ugly. But without a tail, Dad explained, the kite would
be uncontrollable. The rag tail would give it weight and balance and prevent it
pitching wildly in the wind. Finally, we tied the ball of string to the cross,
and I was ready to fly.
I didn’t win. But I had fun, working with my Dad. A warm
memory.
I noticed that cross in my prayer window this morning, and I
thought about myself. I am like the tissue paper (except that I have choice!). I
choose to stretch out on that cross: ‘I have been crucified with Christ’. And as
I align myself with Him, so the wind of the Spirit catches my life and lifts me
higher and higher above the darkness and despair.
I confess that I’d quite like to lose that rag tail. It’s twisted
together from the yuck of life: the duties and responsibilities, the set-backs
and challenges, the difficult situations and people. But without the check of
those things, perhaps my stability would be lost and I would pitch and dive
alarmingly. Those things that I find most tedious and concerning are the things
that keep me depending on Jesus.
Just over the weekend, a new situation developed with Mom’s
care which could have sent me into a steep dive. Instead, as I clung to that
cross, cried out to God to help (remember Isaiah 41?), he sent a dear cousin to
come alongside me and make some calls. The situation was a raggy tail but the
solution was a fresh blow of the wind of the Spirit which has sent me sailing high
this Monday morning.
It’s a bit too windy here today, but one day soon I think I
might just go fly a kite.
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