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Bald Eagle flying in front of blue sky with blurred suggestion of white clouds.
An Eagle Flying in the Sky, a free-to-use Pexels image by Frank Cone. Cropped.

Who Needs Red Bull? Piety Gives You Wings

Arthur T. Pierson describes how the duties of Christian piety, though at first burdensome, in the end bring delight, as wings empower flight.

We are reminded once more of the...myth about the “wingless birds,” who first took up their wings as burdens to be borne, but found them changing to pinions, which, in the end, bore them. We are the birds without wings. God puts our duties before us to be patiently assumed for His sake. But, though at first they are loads, we shall be able afterward to say, with dear Rutherford, “The cross is the sweetest burden that ever I bore: such a s burden as wings are to birds,” that help it to soar; “or, as sails are to the ship,” that help it to catch the breeze that wafts it to the desired haven.”
—Arthur T. Pierson, concluding paragraph of “Duty, A Delight,” a sermon printed in his 1893 collection, The Heights of The Gospel, and reprinted in Baker’s 1978 publication, The Gospel: Its Heart, Heights, And Hopes.