Blog Post
Glenys M Huws • Oct 17, 2020
"As a hen gathers her chicks"
[A reflection by Glenys M Huws from her book "Where the Spirit Dwells - Lenten Reflections on Home". Permission to republish here given by the publisher, The United Church Publishing House and the author. First published in 2007. [] bracketed items reflect current edits.]
Everlasting Wings
"But ask the animals, and they will teach you; the birds of the air; and they will tell you; as the plants of the earth, and th'ey will teach you; and the fish of the sea will declare to you." Job 1:12:7-8
Sometimes our response to another person's boorish or rude behaviour is to think, "That person acts just like an animal," or to say, "You behave as if you were raised in a barn." It's as if rough and unkind behaviour is all we ever experience from the non-human participants in God's creation. As first Nations peoples have known for a long time, there are lessons to be drawn, both positive and negative, from watching how our multi-legged and winged neighbours conduct themselves. Animal behaviour sometimes seems to reflect the heart of the Creator more fittingly than the actions of some human kin.
Jesus appeared to know and appreciate certain animal behaviour. He chose the image of a hen gathering her brood under her wings [ Matthew 23:37]to emphasize something he knew about God's love, about the homecoming God has in store for God's creatures. We can picture in our mind the kind of scene Jesus describes. The chicks are cheeping and pecking their way around their enclosure while the mother hen scratches away nearby. A shadow passes overhead - is it a hawk? The mother hen gives a warning cluck, stretches up, and raises her wings like open doors. All the chicks hurry for shelter and protection inside the feathery walls.
Some hens refuse to gather in chicks who are not members of their own brood, flapping their wings and pecking at the little interlopers to keep them away. Other hens are willing to gather up stray chicks. These hens' welcoming gesture to the abandoned ones is the same - raised wings signalling that care and protection are to be found beneath.
Once gathered in, no distinction is made in the maternal care offered to the orphans and to the hen's own chicks. Thus she provides an even more powerful image of God's welcome.
Evolution theory might suggest that safeguarding only her own chicks would be the best survival strategy for the mother hen. Maybe some hens just don't get it. Or maybe they know something about the heart of the Creator and the homecoming in store for all of God's creatures.
Prayer
Gather us in, Sheltering One. Wrap all who look to find a home in you - old and young, wise and foolish, stranger and friend, rich and poor, courageous and fearful - in the warmth of your everlasting arms.
AMEN
Pilgrim Praxis
The genocide in apartheid and settler colonial Palestine urgently calls for urgent discernment and action. Could the ongoing rounds of blood letting and destruction finally end to begin a journey toward truth, and justice-based peace? I hope so for the sake of all who dwell in this (un)Holy Land.