I found this video below to be fascinating and touching.Recently the folks at Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary rescued over 130 birds from an animal hoarder who had kept them in woefully inadequate conditions, to understate it. When some of the ducks were shown to a pond for the first time, they were quite certain it wasn’t for them, but then… well you can see for yourself.

Interesting, right? You would think that the old adage would hold true – just throw a duck in the water and they will know what to do with it. After all, that’s what they were created for, right? And yet…

And yet after spending years living in another system, the new found freedom feels a little too free. It’s almost uncomfortable as they sit and wait for the other shoe to drop. There’s got to be a catch to this, right? Got to be something else that’s going to happen, right? So I wonder if not for the handlers in the video if the ducks simply would have returned to their cages. Back to where it was comfortable. Back to where it was familiar. Back to where they knew, although they didn’t like, all the rules for living.

But the people above would have none of that. They knew there was more out there. So they patiently herded and shooed their charges back to the water, over and over again. They reminded them gently that they were ducks, and regardless of their past lives, this is where they belonged. Sometimes that kind of reminding takes a while before it really takes hold deeply in the heart. Sometimes it takes a while for one to actually start to believe.

Hmmm… are we still talking about ducks?

“For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you received the Spirit of adoption, by whom we cry out ‘Abba, Father!’ The Spirit Himself testifies together with our spirit that we are God’s children, and if children, also heirs — heirs of God and coheirs with Christ — seeing that we suffer with Him so that we may also be glorified with Him” (Romans 8:15-17).