Flying Inside

Flying Inside

Halfway into a day of jury selection, the judge let our group go for lunch. We’d been escorted by an officer of the county through an underground maze of concrete tunnels before taking an elevator to the courtroom on the twentieth floor. When we were released four hours later, a cafeteria eighteen floors down was suggested. Most of us trudged there, waited some more, ordered, and then sat down with our lunches.

I chose the table nearest to one of the only three windows in sight and had hardly sat down when a small bird flew low across the room, fluttered against the windowpane, then flew off again. Repeatedly for the next thirty minutes, it approached one of the windows, found no opening, and circled the room before trying again. Each time I watched, my heart sank a little more. At the end of the day I would be set free, but apart from some powerful intervention this little lost sparrow would still be flying inside.

I know that sense of futility—of being trapped—and I’ll bet you do too.

Maybe you’re stuck in a job that doesn’t fit, a marriage that is not working, or a role you never asked for or aspired to. Maybe a cycle of addiction or compulsion or regret keeps you coming to the same barricaded place over and over again. Maybe grief smothers you, or maybe anger has you in its grip. Whatever the constraint, you know the feeling of racing the wind and going nowhere. Of flying inside.

At the end of the day, I found the street again and was free. But what of the sparrow’s plight? Was she still flying inside? When we are trapped, isn’t that our secret? We may be unable to change the circumstances of our particular constraint, but we can, every now and then, still manage to fly. We are always free to hope, to think, to dream. We can pray, trust, and even thank our God for the good we’ve known and may yet know. In spite of our surroundings, our restrictions, our constraints, we can be flying inside.

You have been my helper; do not leave me or abandon me, God of my salvation. . . . I am certain that I will see the LORD’s goodness in the land of the living.

Psalm 27:9, 13, HCSB