It was a quiet morning, and I was sitting on my porch, watching a fledgling hawk in the bare branches of a tree in the field.  An adult had been near the fledgling for a while, but now had disappeared.  As I watched, the fledgling took off and flew up into the air, only to turn and dive toward the ground.  Naïve as I was to the behaviors of young birds of prey, I thought it was going after a late-morning breakfast.  However, the creature swerved back into the sky.  As I stared, bemused, it swooped up and down, keening all the way.  Each time it dove, it got closer to the ground, until it eventually flew back to the branch from which it had started and, beak uplifted, screeched loudly.

I realized that this young bird was learning to stoop!  (See here for a list of definitions)

Stooping – the practice of birds of prey as they dive at an unsuspecting target – is something I had observed with fascination before.  I had just assumed that the creatures knew (by instinct?) how to do it from hatch.  Silly me.  They don’t.

I can only imagine a fledgling, being booted from the nest, spending much time in its early life learning how NOT to hurtle toward the ground but rather to fly.  Then, suddenly, they must learn to dive, beak-first, toward the turf intentionally!  No wonder that fledgling had to make several attempts, complaining all the way, before they were ready to hunt on their own!

I reflected that we humans follow a similar learning process.  Many of us were taught early in life to yearn to be better – better than we were when we were younger and “didn’t know any better,” better than others whom our parents or others lift up as bad examples, better than others who we can tell aren’t doing well, one way or the other.  We yearn to fly higher and not succumb to the gravity of the lower tendencies of our personalities: our weaknesses and temptations.  These are good aspirations, and some of us work very hard at them.

That may be why, when Jesus tells us to stoop (another complementary meaning of the word) to the lowly among us, regardless of why they are lowly, we tend to balk.  I read the words in Matthew 25 in the Allegory of the Sheep and the Goats (Matthew 25:31-46), and two things jump out at me.  The first is the surprise of both groups at how the Son of Man regarded what they did.  Neither was aware at the time of the Lord’s observation.  The other is that Jesus very clearly identifies with the lowly – the “least.”  Jesus doesn’t qualify those lowly folks, how they got in that state or what they might have done (or not done) to help themselves.

So, we, who see ourselves as better than all that, struggle with the change.  We’ve done our best to be as good as we can, and now we are supposed to dive down to the lowest among us and try to help them in their sorry state?  It’s a difficult lesson to learn, and I sometimes find myself keening all the way.

But it is a lesson that I must learn, if I am to walk in the way of a Jesus follower.  Much like the hawk fledgling that never learns to stoop, I will wither away if I don’t also learn to stoop.  And I’ll have plenty to keen about if it comes to that.

We need to be like our Lord.  Jesus stooped in a most amazing way to come to our aid.  When I read Paul’s description in Philippians 2:5-11, I am humbled and rejoicing all at the same time.  Jesus stooped (yet another meaning of the word) to our lowly state, and was lifted up to fly higher than all others because of it.

Time to learn more about how to stoop!