A man in our community named Tim owns the cleaners we use. He is a Christian man and I love him. He is a kind man born and reared in Viet Nam. He loves America! He told me how after he moved to America, not many years ago, he was making one hundred fifty dollars per week and when he was in his own country, he could never imagine making that much money in a week! Although he is obviously doing far better than that now, he never forgets how blessed he is. From time to time I will meet new employees, often members of his family that have now joined him in the American dream. The newest member of his team is his sister-in-law named Phoenix. I asked her if she knew of the myth of the phoenix. She had never heard it, so I began to tell her. As I explained it, I became rather animated and summarized, we, like the phoenix, will often be given up on, but we shall rise again out of the ashes of our setbacks and soar into the sky of God’s opportunity.
You're probably familiar with the basic legend of the phoenix, the mythical bird that lives for 500 years, builds its own funeral pyre, is consumed by the flames, and then rises anew from the ashes. This legend supposedly symbolizes the rising and setting of the sun, as well as immortality, resurrection, and life after death. Like all myths, it has a number of versions and many layers of interpretation. It appears in ancient Egyptian, Greek, Arabic, and Chinese mythology. American Indians have their version of the phoenix: the thunderbird, who is believed to be a powerful spirit in the form of a bird. Through its work, the earth is watered and vegetation grows, for lightning is believed to flash from its beak, and the beating of its wings is thought to result in the rolling of thunder. The city of Phoenix got its name because the city rose from the ancient ruins of a Hohokam Indian settlement that existed there until about 1400. In 1867, the Swilling Irrigating Canal Company was formed, and one of the canal builders, a man named Darrell Duppa, suggested the name.
Heroditus says the phoenix is a large eagle-like or heron-like bird with red and gold feathers (although the Chinese phoenix has five colors). The bird is also known to have a beautiful song. The bird is supposed to be very long-lived with a life span of, according to various accounts, 500 years, 540 years, 1000 years, or even 1461 years. This is the phoenix, as we know it, the bird that is resurrected from its own ashes. The Firebird of Destiny!
By the fourth century A.D., the phoenix myth had changed so that the mature bird self-immolated after turning its nest into a funeral pyre. After three days, it “rose again.” Thus the phoenix became identified with the resurrection of Christ and became a symbol of both immortality and life after death.
As the bird kept appearing in writing, its origin changed a little. In Pliny's account of the Roman senator Manilius' report of the genesis of the phoenix, he stated that a small worm grew from the bones and marrow of the dead bird. This worm eventually develops into the new bird. I like what scientist Harry Rimmer called butterflies: “Flying Worms.” As many a caterpillar can turn into a butterfly, even so our desires, if motivated by God, can rise again like the phoenix of ancient myth.
Soon after the catastrophe of September 11, the Netherlands sent a gift to the city of New York. The gift was five million daffodil bulbs. They were placed beneath the ground, and just now in recent days, the gift has become visible as the city blooms everywhere with beautiful golden daffodils. William Wordsworth described a similar scene that New York sees today in his poem written in 1807,
“I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and hill,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils.
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the Milky Way.
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.”
God help us to literally rise up from the ashes of this horrendous event with determination to seek first God’s kingdom and righteousness (Matthew 6:33). May we allow the ashes to serve as dream fertilizer, to come up from the worm existence to the high flight of the Phoenix. May we move from this pronouncement, “Your country is desolate, your cities are burned with fire: your land, strangers devour it in your presence, and it is desolate, as overthrown by strangers” (Isaiah 1:7). My prayer is that we move instead to this word of encouragement, “And the LORD shall guide thee continually, and satisfy thy soul in drought, and make fat thy bones: and thou shalt be like a watered garden, and like a spring of water, whose waters fail not. And they that shall be of thee shall build the old waste places: thou shalt raise up the foundations of many generations; and thou shalt be called, The repairer of the breach, The restorer of paths to dwell in” (Isaiah 58:11,12).
“We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed” (II Corinthians 4:8,9).
-Pastor Pope-