"How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!" (Luke 13:34)
A chicken? Really?
I imagine that if I asked someone to liken God to a bird and what kind of bird that would be, they might say a dove as the Holy Spirit comes to us, or an eagle so that we may be born or their wings. I could imagine the plume of a peacock or the majesty of a swam before I would think: Jesus is like a chicken. Surely there are other birds, beautiful or unusual, that instinctively shelter their young when a cunning predator threatens their safety. No?
We had chickens when I was a kid, seven hens that came with the farm my parents rented. They poisoned me when I was three with salmonella and pecked at my hands when I reached for their eggs. But they also constitute some of my earliest memories. They may not be such exotic animals, but they were part of my landscape. Right alongside memories of my sister crawling and some stray kittens we found in box alongside the road are the chickens strutting around the driveway. Chickens must have been common too to the townspeople where Jesus proclaimed, healed, and loved. He must have known that if he compared the way he loved people to a mother hen and her brood, they would have known exactly what he was talking about. And so there are times when we hear in the Bible of the unbounded, frightening, blinding glory of God. And then there are other times when Jesus' power is earthy and everyday and woven seamlessly into our world.
Reflection
Begin a list like this: Jesus' love is like... and what kinds of things can you imagine? Be concrete. Email me your list if you don't want to post it here.
Prayer
We give thanks, God, for the beauty of the land and people in which you have raised us up as your children. Clear our vision that we may witness you in the small and ordinary places of our daily lives. We ask this in Jesus' name, Amen
Pastor Amy, Tell them about the hen who sought her eggs the way the woman in Luke's parable looked for the lost coin. Remember how she got locked out of the barn one night, and sat on the roof, carrying on until we let her in, and how she never gave up on her eggs, having laid them in an old tire in the barn. She was a good mother hen. Never gave up. And made a fuss until she got back to her nest.
ReplyDeletelove, Mom
P.S. Jesus' love is like my daughter.
Wow, that was an amazing reflection. That’s so very true about a hen and her egg’s and about the Lord and his lost lambs. I think many of us get to far away from God and he always is looking after us. Thanks Amy’s mom!
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