Cages or Wings: Which Do You Prefer?
Consider the ravens, that they neither sow nor reap; they have no storeroom nor barn, and yet God feeds them; how much more valuable you are than the birds! And which of you by worrying can add a day to his life’s span? Therefore if you cannot do even a very little thing, why do you worry about the other things? Consider the lilies, how they grow: they neither labor nor spin; but I tell you, not even Solomon in all his glory clothed himself like one of these. Now if God so clothes the grass in the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the furnace, how much more will He clothe you? You of little faith! And do not seek what you are to eat and what you are to drink, and do not keep worrying. For all these things are what the nations of the world eagerly seek, and your Father knows that you need these things. — Luke 12:24–30 (NASB)
This year on my 51st birthday, I watched a movie with my family with many songs. One of those songs deeply spoke to me; it asked the question,
“Cages or wings, which do you prefer? Ask the birds!”
Immediately, I thought of these verses in Luke, and I began to think about the connection between these two ideas. Jesus was very nuanced in how he spoke about these truths to us. He was asking the same kind of question as the song, but in a way that forces us to consider and answer it. But be careful. Once you answer the question, what you will do going forward could be drastically different.
The Apparent Stability of a Cage
The thing about cages is that they give a sense of control. When I was young, we had birds and kept them in cages. But if we left the cage door open, they would fly away. If we asked the birds if they wanted cages or wings, they would prefer wings repeatedly. Why? We are feeding them, caring for them, giving them guaranteed shelter, but open the door, and they fly away into the unknown without hesitation into what could be dangerous and unsettled. As humans, we are obsessed with control, yet we are not in control of anything. Jesus said it himself in verses 29–30,
“And do not seek what you are to eat and what you are to drink, and do not keep worrying. For all these things are what the nations of the world eagerly seek, and your Father knows that you need these things.”
Jesus points out astutely that God knows what we need and that we should not be worried about building the cage that will protect us and the infrastructures that will take care of us. By creating a cage, we rely on the cage and not on God, who knows everything we need and will provide it in His way. Open the cage door and the bird bolts into the world where God takes care of them daily. How often do we stand at the edge of the opening on our cages and just can’t fly? The cage is just too real, and so is our fear of the unknown.
So we choose the cage. The problem is that the cage will never satisfy us, like living in the world God created for us in complete freedom to become everything he intended and continues to plan for us. It seems limitless in the possibilities, but when asked, “Cages or wings?” We choose the cages; it just feels safer.
The Messiness of Freedom
On the other hand, pockets of our human societies champion the idea that we should just throw caution to the wind and fly our own flight out of the cages we find ourselves in. Even if we die in the process, it is better than life in the cage until you realize that you have just flown out of one cage into another.
Absolute freedom does not lie in the idea that we are free to do whatever we want or that we have defined ourselves as capable or deserving of freedom for the sake of freedom itself. This kind of thinking is not only a mess, but it is ironically a cage in and of itself.
When the bird flies out of the cage, she reenters a world where she is no longer in control; God is in control. The bird is perfectly a bird in the world because she is now entirely in the hands of God without the expectation that anything or anyone else will care for her. She is free to be a bird and fly where God leads her and trust that God will care for her until her life on earth is no longer a part of the will of God. Then God will usher her into whatever rest awaits the birds (one that perhaps only God knows).
Jesus shows this in the opening statement of this passage when He says,
“Consider the ravens, that they neither sow nor reap; they have no storeroom nor barn, and yet God feeds them; how much more valuable you are than the birds?” (v. 24)
The birds are flying free of the cages of safety, it is true, but they trade the security and stability of the cage life for a common and all-consuming trust that the God who created them will care for them, and in that trust is where actual true freedom is found.
Leadership, Cages & Freedom
As leaders, we tend to fail to recognize that we are typically trying to either convince others that the cage life is the best, or we are trying to get our people to fly out of one cage into another. We don’t do this on purpose; we do it because we are operating in a cage, and we may not even really realize how much freedom we could be experiencing if we fully trust God. As Jesus so aptly put it, we are just lacking in faith; the warmth of the lives we live in and safely with the people around us is just too appealing, leaving all of that just too scary.
We cannot seek to control those whom God has sent us; we need to seek to let God set them free and do whatever God is calling them to do. This kind of leadership will often mean that they will not be anything like us or do what makes us comfortable. But a great leader recognizes that duplicating me is not setting them free. They must reach their highest potential in Christ. That is the goal for all of us.
In contemplating this dilemma, Paul’s words can deeply connect for us,
“For I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work among you will complete it [by the day of Christ Jesus. For it is only right for me to feel this way about you all because I have you in my heart since both in my imprisonment and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel, you all are partakers of grace with me.” — I Philippians 1: 6–7
Do you see it? It’s all there. Paul chose to fly out of the well-developed and informed cage that he found himself in to more fully love God and love the people whom God sent to him and sent him. He did this knowing that his work was only a matter of using the wings that God gave him to fly so that Christ could do the actual work of providing others absolute freedom to step out of their cages and fly. Even if that meant that sometimes Paul ended up in a man-made cell, he was always completely free.
So the key is in the answer to the question, “Cages or wings, which do you prefer?” Your answer is essential because it will change your actions forever, and it will also change the impact of your ministry forever on the people around you. Remember, it was for freedom that Christ set us free (Galatians 5:1), and His liberty has only the boundaries of what He has always intended for us from the very beginning, to love Him and others without measure.
Here is the complete lyric of the chorus to the song I first told you about:
“Cages or wings, which do you prefer? Ask the birds. Fear or love, baby, don’t say the answer. Actions speak louder than words.” (Larson, 2021 0:55, 1:56, 3:28, 3:50)
Perhaps as ministry leaders, we need to find the freedom to explore opportunities to build birdhouses instead of cages.
References
Larson, J. (2021) Louder than words [Song]. On Tick, Tick… Boom! (Soundtrack from the Netflix film). Sony Entertainment. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TX78Wqx1JM4
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