Stare at the Chicken

…And Your Soul Stares Back At You

Meet Gimpy.

When my mom recently mail-ordered 15 baby chicks, one of them came with a bum leg. It seems twisted backward/upside-down somehow, and makes it hard for the poor little guy to walk.

He’s my favorite, though – partly because he’s the one I can usually identify with certainly.

Life isn’t all roses and Starter Feed for our flamingo-wannabe. For the first few weeks of his life, we had to separate him from his siblings because they would peck at him and his leg. Without human protection, he’s in greater danger from predators; he can’t climb the ramp to the chicken coop as easily as his coop-mates.

And, as my mom has callously said, we’ll probably have to eat him.

(I realize that was part of the whole point, but it won’t be me putting him on the chopping block. That’s what little brothers who were sent away to survival camp are for.)

Why would I get so attached to a bird? It’s a bird – an animal with a brain the size of a pea that poops in its food and thinks the morsel its sibling is holding is way tastier than the rest of the banana peel right under its beak!

Yes, they’re all trying to sit in their food pan.

I think we’re meant to form emotional attachments. We’re commanded to meet together (Heb. 8: 24-5), encourage each other (1 Thes. 5: 11-4), and be invested in each other’s lives (Matt 18: 15-7) because we’re intended by our Maker to create super-material bonds…with other human beings, and with Him.

And because blessings always seem to come “pressed down, shaken out, pouring over” (Lk 6: 28), we automatically project the same emotional/cognitive/spiritual complexities and connections on the dumb beasts that share our lives. We can’t but help touch and be touched by the creatures around us.

It says much more about us than about them.

It’s how we’re made. Image-bearers of the Creator, assigning meaning to things that didn’t have it before…