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A Lesson From the Stork

“EVEN the stork in the heavens—it well knows its appointed times . . . But as for my people, they have not come to know the judgment of Jehovah.” (Jeremiah 8:7) With those words, the prophet Jeremiah sounded Jehovah’s judgment against the apostate people of Judah, who had left Jehovah their God and turned to the worship of foreign deities. (Jeremiah 7:18, 31) Why did Jeremiah choose the stork as an object lesson for the unfaithful Jews?

To the Israelites, the stork, and especially the white stork, was a familiar sight as it migrated through Bible lands. The Hebrew name for this large, long-legged wading bird is the feminine form of a word that means “loyal one; one of loving-kindness.” This is fitting, for unlike most other birds, male and female white storks remain paired for life. After wintering in warmer regions, most storks return year after year, often to the same nest that they have used before.

The stork’s instinctive behavior illustrates the quality of loyalty in other remarkable ways. Both male and female birds share in incubating the eggs and feeding the chicks. The book Our Magnificent Wildlife explains: “As parents, storks are exceptionally faithful. A male stork in Germany flew into high-tension wires and was electrocuted. His mate continued to incubate the eggs alone for 3 days, during which she left the nest only once for a short time to look for food. . . . In another case, when the female stork was shot, the father reared the young.”

Indeed, by instinctively showing faithfulness to its lifelong mate and tender care for its young, the stork lives up to the meaning of its name—“loyal one.” Thus, storks served well as a powerful lesson to the unfaithful and wayward Israelites.

To many people today, loyalty and faithfulness are quaint ideas—admirable but not practical. The proliferation of divorce, abandonment, embezzlement, and other forms of deceit demonstrates that loyalty is no longer valued. In contrast, the Bible places a high value on loyalty that is motivated by love and kindness. It urges Christians to “put on the new personality which was created according to God’s will in true righteousness and loyalty.” (Ephesians 4:24) Yes, the new personality helps us to be loyal, but we can also learn a lesson about loyalty from the stork.