Under His Wings

“O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the one who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, but you were not willing!” Matthew 23:37

I have always found chickens to be humorous creatures. I chuckle at the way their heads bob forwards and backwards with each step they take and at the way they cock their heads to the side to look directly at something. Their dust baths are quirky, too. Chickens use dust baths to clean their feathers, relax and socialize. Their clucking and the other noises they generate make me shake my head in amusement.

I decided to look chickens up on Wikipedia to learn more. Something that caught my attention was the term “brooding.” Brooding is when a hen sits on her fertilized eggs and provides the exact right conditions for them to hatch. She creates the perfect amount of humidity and the perfect temperature while sitting on them. She does not get up even to eat, drink or dust-bathe.

After the eggs hatch, she continues to sit or “brood” on them for about two days. As they grow, she will continue to brood when necessary and will fight off anything that comes near. She takes her chicks out to the world and demonstrates the necessities of survival. She does not feed them, and instead shows them how to eat by calling them to edible items. She leads by example. When the chicks are able to survive on their own, she loses interest and goes to lay more eggs and repeat the cycle of chicken life.

Jesus compares Himself to a brooding hen in this passage in Luke. He longs to gather Jerusalem’s children under His wings. The term “brood” is used as a noun, but it leads me to believe that He longs to care for us like a brooding hen cares for her chicks. He longs to cover us and protect us while creating the perfect conditions to grow and mature us as Christians. He will fight for us when necessary and He will meet our every need until we are stable and mature enough to go out. He feeds us with His Word and shows us lessons in the ways we should go by His examples.

Dear Jesus, thank You for being like a brooding mother hen. Thank You for investing your time in me and providing just the right environment for me to grow and mature into the Christian woman I was created to be. And, unlike the hen, thank You for never losing interest in me. You always have an eye on me and will take me into ‘brood’ as necessary throughout my life here on earth. Amen!