Most of us know of people who have chickens in their back yards to provide them with fresh eggs! You might even be one of those fun-loving people!
If you have ever paid attention around this time of year to chickens, ducks, geese or turkeys that have hatched their young, they will put the majority of the spring and summer into protecting and raising (training) their young.
I’m sure many of you have heard the old story about the farmer who lost his barn in a fire…later, as he was walking through the rubble and the memories he saw the burned carcass of a chicken hen. He kicked the dead chicken aside and when he did several baby chicks ran out from under her! That mother hen had given her life to protect her young.
I saw something today that stirred-up all these “hen and chick” memories…I was on the tractor mowing some grass that was about 16″ tall mixed with really thick clover. (It’s a rotary mower on the back of the tractor.) After one of the rows as I was heading back in the other direction, I thought “what is that sticking straight up?” It was the head and neck of a turkey! Just then, a big hen turkey stood up in the middle of the lane I had just mowed and when she did about a dozen little turkey chicks started to follow her out of the field!
That mower was set to cut to a height of 4-1/2″. There was not a single feather left behind and no trace of where the turkeys had been. Fortunately, they were not in the path of the tires, but that hen turkey “flattened” her big body out somehow – willing to give her life if necessary to protect her young chicks just like the chicken protected hers from the fire. The turkey and all her chicks scurried away unscathed.
“O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones God’s messengers! How often I have wanted to gather your children together as a hen protects her chicks beneath her wings, but you wouldn’t let me.” Matthew 23:37 (NLT)
Till Next Time…..
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