The other night, I thought one of our chickens had been lost.
This is nothing new where I live. Danger prowls both night and day. Not only the usual hawk and racoon culprits, but coyotes, hogs, gators, bald eagles–we’ve even seen bobcats and panthers on the trail cams. Those chickens live in a perpetual state of risk, much like we do in this world. Every afternoon I free the birds for a couple hours before sundown, so they have some taste of freedom, but they don’t always all make it back safely.
As a quick note on chicken naming, these little fluff balls get named in batches of like-age birds according to a theme. Names are not indicative of gender (they’re often named before it’s obvious), but because of the weird chicken and egg crisis last year, I took whatever birds I could lay my hands on and wound up with more roosters than anything else, which will be dealt with quite imminently. This round were all artists, authors, and characters of a certain age: Picasso, Melville, Hawthorne, Doyle, Sherlock, Oscar [Wilde].
Just before Thanksgiving, I went to lock up for the night and Picasso had been brutally attacked. This grey and white “painted” bantam (ones with poofy heads) was cut and bloodied across his entire face. I wasn’t even sure if his eyes were still intact under lids which were fused shut. My youngest, Quentin, is a great lover of animals and my happiest helper with them. We moved Picasso to a quarantine coop so the others wouldn’t pick at him and daily tended his wounds with neosporin until he was thriving again. For a little, I thought he might have to come on the Thanksgiving road trip with us to continue his care, but Picasso did fine as king of his own little coop castle.
The only problem was that the other roosters would not accept Picasso back into the flock. I couldn’t even free two coops at the same time (normally how they learn to acclimate with new birds) or I would spend the rest of the night splitting up a violent cock-fight. All the other roosters needed to go, or Picasso might need to find a new home. But he was so gentle that we hoped to keep him. One afternoon, I freed just him so he could strut around the outside of the other coop without the larger mean roosters going after him. But I forgot about the inherent safety in numbers.
I was outside doing yardwork when I heard the screams and by the time I ran over, it was too late. A hawk only half his size had still managed to spring an attack. The hawk lost his dinner, but we lost the little guy we had just spent weeks nursing back to life. When I told Quentin, his eyes were about the size of dinner plates. That’s just farm life, but no one fully warns you how much it hurts when you lose a little life you’ve tended so carefully. The girls in his grade even held a virtual funeral for the last little frizzle we lost.
But Picasso’s sister Oscar is the family favorite. Since Quentin is allergic to fur, this prevents many traditional pets, but the frizzle birds almost feel and act like furry little kittens. They even join laps for movies and purr. But it must be said, they’re sort of the special needs class of the chicken realm. We happen to find their antics endearing and quite comical. They tend to get picked on a bit and we love on them extra to make up for it.
After freeing everyone one afternoon, they made a move on Oscar, but that spunky girl puts up a heck of a fight. Those red roosters are pretty tough on the little hens, and I have acknowledged that their time has come. But that same night when I went to lock up in the dark, little Oscar was not in the coop where they all bed down. The memory of Quentin’s wide-eyed expression instantly swam before my eyes at the thought of having to tell him that she was now gone also and I panicked.
I grabbed a flashlight and started hunting through the surrounding meadow in the dark for any evidence of where she had been snatched as proof she was truly gone. I scoured each other shed or structure where she may have gone to hide, thinking a solitary life must be better than one with those roosters. I went back to the coop and counted obsessively. We farmers call this “chicken math.” I hunted through the dark like a mad woman until I finally found the little cubby she had tucked herself away in and I brought her back to the flock.
I felt like the woman in the Parable of the Lost Coin in Luke 15:8-10, wherein a woman loses one of her ten coins, then diligently searched her house, lighting lamps, sweeping, cleaning, until she finally finds this precious item, then calls her friends over to celebrate it, symbolizing God’s great joy in finding one wayward, repentant sinner. This follows the Parable of the Lost Sheep in Luke 15:3-7 where a shepherd leaves 99 of his flock to find the one lost and restore it, revealing a similar message.
In one, the search occurs outside the established safe zone of the flock, recognizing that evil and danger prowl to draw us away from the flock and the mercy God shows as He seeks to find us where we are and bring us back. But in the parable of the lost coin, the woman searches within her home, revealing that there are those that reside within the church and Christian community, yet are still lost and have not truly repented and given their lives to Him.
In both, God demonstrates that His search for us is individualized as we repent. As the Good Shepherd, He carries us on His shoulders as if we are the only one in need of mercy and care. Not many realize, a shepherd will often break the legs of a wayward sheep to keep it from wandering off again, which is why it needs to be carried. Even this difficult process is done in love, though when we’re the one whose legs have been broken, it may not feel like it at the time. God’s personal and persistent love for us shows us just how much He cares to keep us from grave errors, to protect and provide for us, and to shepherd each of us with love that is sometimes tender and sometimes tough, but always true.
My efforts to find little Oscar both inside and outside of the coop are nothing compared to how God seeks us. I didn’t even know where to search, and yet God knows whether we are simply a sheep that has gone astray in the world or a silver coin hiding in the midst of others. I do know the moment of rejoicing that I felt in finding my goofy, yet precious little bird. Not just a nameless member of the flock, this little life was unrelentingly and actively sought after. I also know the agony of failure with the very different result in saving Picasso; my efforts to protect and heal him were insufficient and ineffective. This lesson is twofold. First, not all are meant to be saved; sometimes we will not be successful. Second, it is not up to us to decide who is saved. All we can do is try to demonstrate the security and love found in God’s saving grace. Then you have the evil roosters, whose destruction is imminent, and the brutal truth is that God still uses those who will not be saved for the purposes of His glory.
As each lost soul is saved, we are told that all the saints rejoice. We are told that God knows precisely how many will be saved and we are patient as He builds His kingdom. Yet many of us know the agony of waiting for the finality of Christ’s return, crying out “How long, Oh Lord?” and I began to imagine the rejoicing throughout heaven as the very last soul to join the flock returns to the fold.