BARBARA'S

by Stephen J. Michels

He was a kite.  Lovingly prepared, he was made in the old style, from thin bamboo sticks and rice paper, formed and shaped to be just so.  Then one day, after the craftsman was sure the kite was balanced perfectly and the breeze was just right, he was taken out to a field where many other craftsmen were with their kites. As the breeze blew, the craftsman attached a string to the kite and gently tossed it into the air.  With some maneuvering and running backwards the kite eventually started to fly and began to catch the currents of the air and lifted upwards.

As the kite would go higher and higher different currents would move it and buffet it, but always it was attached to the ground by its string, held in the hand of the craftsman who made it.  There would be times when the wind would be light and the kite would just gently sway through the breeze up above everything else. Then there were moments when a current of air would come so swiftly and it would catch the kite and it would draw the kite and the strain on the whole frame of the kite would be great and the kite would tremble as the tension on the string quivered.  There were times when the kite would notice other things in the air- the leaves and such that would catch the air and they would be whisked off by these currents and flows of the wind, but the kite was held, straining in its tension.

At first, the kite enjoyed its view and its vista and its movements at the hands of the craftsman and his string, but over time the kite began to long to be as free as everything else caught by the wind.  He saw things pirouetting and moving to levels higher than his string would allow, going distances the string would not permit.  Eventually the kite wished against all else to be free of the string and the one who held it. One day, his wish came true. One day, as the kite was trembling under the tension of a great wind, as the craftsman was trying to maneuver the kite’s position against the force of the wind, the string snapped.  In that instant the kite was free.  In that moment the kite caught in that wind was driven upward, flowing in the currents to levels it had never seen before.  Travelling over distances, no longer restrained, no longer contained, no longer controlled. In that moment there was great euphoria for the kite.

But then the wind shifted and changed and in a moment the kite began to feel itself twisting and spinning in the current of the wind. He had never experienced that before because always the string and the hand of the craftsman had held it in the best position in the wind. The craftsman had always directed it so if the wind became too strong he would pull it slightly to the side, if the wind sagged he would begin to tug on the string to get the kite to rise again to a better spot.  But now the kite was at the mercy of the wind. It began to twist and turn, it began to be driven up and then pushed down. It began to spin in all directions and as its tail became tangled around it eventually it reached the point where, in its movements, it had dropped below the main flow of the wind and it began to fall. There was no tug on the string to pull it back up. There was no winding of the string to draw it in. It just fell. It fell until it crashed into the ground, until its bamboo sticks snapped and its rice paper tore.  It was a ruin in the field.  And because there was no string to follow, no craftsman came and found it to pick it up and put it back together again.

That kite is you and me. That kite is every person who has ever been born.  That string that holds us is that which GOD has ordained in HIS plan and design for every human being and the craftsman, of course, is GOD Himself, holding the string, sending the kite up. But we live and have lived for a long time in this world with the desire to break the string that restrains us.

Stephen Michels is a teacher, camp speaker and pastor-at-large in Nova Scotia, Canada, where he resides with his wife, Samantha, and three children.  Stephen met Samantha while they were both serving as teachers at the Halifax Christian Academy. Both Stephen and Samantha have a heart for the children and families of the eastern provinces of Canada. Having ministered for more than three decades with children, teens and young adults in school, church and Christian camping settings, Stephen has a burden for what he sees as the loss of this generation’s biblically defined identity.  “The Parable of the Kite” was originally presented in a sermon as part of a series called “Identity Crisis”. Posted with permission.