The Eagle and Edison

The back roads of Arkansas have a way of whispering secrets if you’re driven enough to listen. On a lazy, amber-lit morning, I found myself winding through the Ozark foothills, drifting past the blurred greens of a waking forest.

Then, I rounded a curve and saw it: a massive commercial chicken house. It was a long, industrial scar on the landscape, surrounded by a dusting of white feathers that looked like fallen snow. Behind the wire mesh, thousands of chickens clucked in a frantic, crowded hum.

But it wasn't the farm that stopped me. It was the sentinel guarding it.

Perched on the low, reaching limb of a silver maple, barely ten feet from the coop, sat a bald eagle. He was breathtaking. His body was a silhouette of midnight silk, topped with a head of pure, snowy white. His eyes, sharp and piercing as amber glass, were locked onto the sea of white feathers behind the wire.

At first, I laughed. There was something almost comedic about it; the world’s most majestic predator halted by a few cents worth of chicken wire. I imagined his "bird brain" working through the physics of the problem. Would he try to bite through? Would he look for a gap in the foundation?

But as I sat there, the humor faded, replaced by a deeper, more sobering question: Why was I rooting for the eagle?

Both are birds. Both are part of the same intricate design of life. Does God love an eagle more than he loves a chicken? Does he love you more than he loves me? Yet, we don’t write anthems about chickens. We don’t put chickens on our currency or look to them as symbols of freedom. Why? Because the chicken is defined by its enclosure, while the eagle is defined by its freedom.

The Trap of the "Easy Meal"

I suspect that eagle sat there for hours, waiting for a stray bird to wander out or for a miracle to drop a meal at his feet. Eventually, hunger likely won out over hope, and he took to the sky, still empty-handed (or empty-taloned).

We often do the same thing. We sit on our metaphorical branches, staring intensely at the "coop" of our dreams. We see the opportunity. We see the reward. But we wait for the wire to disappear on its own. We wait for the "lucky break" to stumble out the door and offer itself up.

Finding Your "Coop"

Unlike the eagle, we weren't just given wings; we were given the spark of the Divine, of a creative mind and the power of positive thinking.

• Thomas Edison stared at the "coop" of darkness until he figured out how to light the world.

• Dr. Jonas Salk stared at the "coop" of polio until he engineered a way to break the cage.

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We all have a chicken coop. It’s that place where opportunity is visible but protected by an obstacle or a problem or a difficulty. The difference between the person who hungers and the person who feasts isn’t just desire, it’s the willingness to use every resource, every prayer, and every ounce of grit to find a way through the wire.

The moral? Don’t just sit on the branch hoping for a handout. God gave you the vision to see the goal and the mind to achieve it.

And if the struggle feels long and the wire feels thick, just remember: At least you aren't the chicken.