One of the sounds I like to hear on a warm summer's day is the distinctive rising call of the buzzards. Have you ever stood near the cliff edge and watched them circling in a thermal. Sometimes there are two on opposite sides of the rising column of air, sometimes more. At the end of the summer the youngsters join their parents in this seeming exercise of pleasure. Lazily going round and round with hardly a movement of their wings, letting the air lift them higher and higher. Are they just enjoying the freedom of the moment, unconcerned for a time about searching for the next meal. Moving further and further out over the sea, then swooping back again in a long, smooth arc to rise even higher in the next thermal. Sometimes they go so high that they disappear from sight in the brightness of the sky, but their calls to each other are still audible.

With the buzzards out of sight the attention is drawn to the seagulls they too seem to soar along the coast and over the cliffs as if enjoying using and showing off their aerobatic skills. They swoop down nearly touching the water, then rise up on the incoming wind with just a twist of their wings and a few languid flaps. Masters of the medium they have been born to.

It reminds me of watching the hang gliders and parachutes that were often seen over the hills of Malvern where I now live once again. The intrepid pilots of these craft would climb up the steep hillside, their apparatus strapped to their backs and then just below the ridge they would unpack the flimsy looking wings and spend many minutes putting the gear together, sometimes getting a fellow pilot to check that all was in order. Then grasping the frame and with a steadying hand from a mate they would run down the slope into the wind and launch out over the plain below, letting the rising air lift them above the ridge as it blew up the slopes. Once safely encased in the cocoon that held them to the structure they would soar along the length of the hills with just a few tugs at a bar to steer into the thermals and rise higher and higher. When at last they were ready to return to terra firma they would head out away from the slopes and gently glide down to a field half a mile away where they would land with a short run as the air tipped out of the wing. Sometimes they would climb even higher and head out further to land several miles away.

As I stood watching these intrepid pilots trust themselves entirely to the invisible up currents I would think how much of an example it is to us in our relationship with God. We can't see him or feel him and often find it hard to fathom his infinite love for us. Sometimes, like the pilots trusting in the power of the wind, we must just trust, have faith that the love of the Almighty Creator will carry us through. We must take the initiative and go for it. With the hang glider pilots it is an informed risk, they have seen others do it and know that it is possible, even on their first flight. We too have the example of others and also the promises of God's word to encourage us.