Every Home Should Have a Hen

Every home should have a hen.

A flock of hens for eggs is wonderful, but a broody hen that sits on some hidden nest of eggs for three weeks, hatches out chicks, and then strolls around the property with them clucking with her special, protective, comforting, mothery clucks is even better.

I discovered this one yesterday when I took a basket of laundry out to hang. It was the first time since my surgery that I was able to hang laundry on the lines outside, since I'd been warned not to lift my arm above my shoulder for four weeks. 

It was wonderful to be outside in the South Dakota sunshine again in the morning, before the afternoon heat sizzled in too terribly. So there I was right next to the garden and the fresh morning glories, fitting Jonathan's work shirts onto hangars, when I heard the gentle little clucks.

They were coming from inside the garden. The gate had been left a little ajar, and the mama hen and her chicks were in the garden.

I found them in the corn where there were not so many scritchy, creeping, cluttering squash or pumpkin or melon vines and leaves, 

clucking and cheeping. 

As soon as I arrived looking for them, (and discovering a few zucchini and yellow squash to pick as well,) the hen decided to come say hi. 

I talked to her, and she came up close, unafraid. Her head cocked this way and that. 

Finishing hanging the first load of laundry, I returned to the garden with a bucket to pick green and yellow string beans. I must have picked a bushel, while the mama hen scritched and scratched and looked for bugs and grasshoppers somewhere nearby.

Although my mind kept going to a loved one in distress and to an acquaintance who was nearing death, the sister of Pastor Solomon Shaffer of Beavertown God's Missionary Church, 

the mother hen brought me comfort. 

She gave me the words for fresh prayers for those I love who are passing through shadowed valleys.

"As a mother comforts, Lord, comfort those who are suffering, who are very literally dying,

and those who only wish they could die.

Jesus, You Yourself said, 'O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how often I would have gathered you as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings!'

Gather, O Hen of Heaven, Your suffering chicks under Your wings!"

And let us be safe there.