Soar

My wife loves kites. You may have seen her - she’s often at the park, on a smooth, green hill, with a small stunt kite dancing hundreds of feet above her. When she was younger, she would go there at night for the cool evening breeze and the bright summer moonlight. I think she’d be there still if it weren’t for marriage and the responsibilities of life.

A few years ago on vacation in Texas, we stopped at a shop for a brand new kite. Soon it was out on the beach, a pink and yellow wonder amongst seagulls and clouds. She played with it for a while and then asked me to take over. Now, I’ve never had much luck with kites (or anything else, for that matter), so when she asked me, I was reluctant. But eventually I caved, and as I took the handles from her, the force of the wind nearly snatched them from my grasp. I cautiously fed out the line, and the impatient kite jumped upward. Emboldened, I fed out some more, and the kite lurched higher. It spun and dove in the clouds like a dolphin in the waves, the very picture of freedom.

The longer I watched it, the more I wanted to dance, twirl, swoop, and race through the air like the kite. I longed to be unencumbered, but I was anchored far below, chained to the cold earth. If only I were free to follow the wild sea winds, I thought, to leave everything behind and soar.

I let the line go slack, eager for the kite to disappear in the clouds. But to my surprise, it turned earthward and plunged helplessly into the surf. And so it was that I understood a little more of what it means to be human.

You see, for years I’ve struggled with terrible confusion over what God made us to be, and how we should live as a result. I’ve read the Scriptures and the biographies of great people who’ve encountered the Father and experienced the miraculous. I too have heard the voice of God and felt his Spirit call me to wild adventure. But I also have a family, and a dog, and a job, with responsibilities and pressures and the problems of life. And yet again, all around me is suffering, and injustice, and poverty. What does God want from me? And who am I really?

It depends on the person I ask. Some would tell me that I’m a physical being, and that thinking I’m spiritual only brings an inner tension that destroys me. I should live for my family, my job, and my self.

Others would tell me that it’s a matter of timing. I am earthly now and should focus on solving the problems of the world. But when I die, I can live in the Spirit whose call I can hear in the winds and the night. Like Jesus, I must sacrifice the joys of Heaven to live for a season in the wasteland of the world.

Still others would tell me that I’m a spiritual being trapped in the earthly world for a time. They would tell me the tension I feel between heaven and earth comes from an ungodly attachment to worldly things. If I would just sever all ties to ‘the flesh’, I’d be free to soar in the Spirit.

But on the beach that day, I understood what God intended. Like the kite, I am made to fly, made to spread my wings and soar the heavens. But I cannot fly as a citizen of heaven unless, like the kite, I am also anchored firmly to this world. I am not either physical or spiritual—I’m both-and. And the tension I feel between heaven and earth is not a problem to be solved, it is an identity to be embraced. It is the essence of being human, to be an animal, but more than an animal, to be flesh, but more than mere flesh, to be spirit, but more than spirit. It is to embrace my place in the created world and yet partake in the very nature of God.

This is the lesson of the kite.