Don't be a Chicken

Psalm 100

Everything I really ought to know about living out Psalm 100 I learned from a gang of rowdy roosters. Yes, I know, it’s April Fools Day, but I’m telling you the honest truth. Let me explain how my quest for this knowledge began in such a fowl direction.

Our family entered the chicken adventure two years ago when our girls received six chicks from Tractor Supply for their birthdays. Not long after that, we acquired six more. All was well until we discovered that three of the six chicks in the second batch were roosters! What had once been pastoral scene from one of Norman Rockwell’s paintings turned into an all-out free-for-all crow-fest of chest bumping and spur-scratching to determine who would be the manliest rooster in the roost! Although this contest was quite entertaining for all the other creatures (including the humans) on the Buckner farm, it was often quite brutal for the roosters.

Why couldn’t our feathered friends just get along? Well, you see, every farmer and every rooster knows that a flock of our size needs only one rooster to protect the hens and perpetuate the flock and none of our three would rest until that was decided. There’s nothing terribly complicated about all this, these fellows were just doing what God made them to do.

What is it that you and I are designed to do? A reading of Psalm 100 provided an answer for me: We are designed to be in communion with God. What if we allowed this place of communion to set our posture for everything we think or do or say? A difficult task, indeed, but what if we stuck to the nature of our Divine design with the same tenacity as my rowdy roosters? Let’s not be too chicken to give it a try!

Prayer: Father, fill us so with your presence that whether we sing or crow, we do so with gladness! Amen.

Written by Danny Buckner