Our family lives on a one-acre property on a mountain just outside the city limits. We have some fruit trees and some chickens. Our chickens live in a large pen with a chicken coop on one side where the chickens lay their eggs and sleep at night. Sometimes in the evening I go and check up on them to make sure they are all sleeping inside the coop where it is safe.
One night as I was counting the sleepy chickens, I noticed two were missing. I walked around the property but could not find the missing hens. I wondered if a fox or coyote had caught them since one time we had spotted coyotes in our yard.
Then as I double checked the chicken coop, I heard faint cooing sounds above. I looked up in the tree in the chicken yard and spotted one of the missing hens perched on a branch high above the ground. We wondered how she had gotten up that high. She was too high to just reach up to catch her, so we got a ladder and brought it to the tree. She must have thought she was safe up there.
I climbed the ladder and tried lifting the chicken off the branch, but she wouldn’t budge. She held on tighter with her claws and flapped her wings at me. No matter what I tried, that hen did not want to be taken off that branch!
This reminded me that sometimes people who belong to the Lord Jesus are the same way. They stray from His side and think they can find something better. They don’t realize the danger of the world, which only brings sadness, destruction and sometimes death. The Lord Jesus tries bringing them back to His fold, but they want their own way. Just like the stubborn chicken, they don’t want to turn away from their sinful ways. The chicken thought she was safe up in the tree, but she could have fallen off the branch or even a raccoon could have easily climbed the tree and caught her. Raccoons like chicken dinners.
We eventually got the chicken out of the tree and found the other missing chicken in a bush nearby. We carried them into the coop where they both were safe for the night along with the other chickens.
And that’s how the Lord Jesus wants to care for you. He knows what’s best for you. Will you follow Him? “My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me” (John 10:2727My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me: (John 10:27)).
ML-10/02/2016