The Need for an Egg Tooth

A frequent comment made to me now that we are settled in the country on 2 acres goes like this, "So, how many animals are you going to have and when are you getting chickens?  They are so easy you know!"

Ummm, chickens?  Well yes, I like to roast them and enjoy Saturday morning omelets with their eggs each week.  Raise them?  Um, how many ways can we say never?

Uh-oh.  The dreaded never word.  How many times in my life never has become, "Why did I wait so long to try it?"

Pulling out my trusty computer key board I decided to research this so-easy-work and just see what's truly involved.  I found the most amazing site:  Home Grown on a Hobby Farm.  Her videos are wonderful.  I enjoyed the ones on chicken raising very much.  One thing struck me in a spiritual sense as I watched chickens hatching from eggs, their egg tooth.

In God's wisdom, he designed the chicken to have everything it needed to come out of its shell.  A simple tooth.  The chick, ready to hatch, pecks at the shell with its tooth until the shell is removed and the hatchling can emerge and welcome itself to the world.  The job completed, the egg tooth is no longer needed.  The wet, weak young one can allow the air to dry and fluff feathers.  Soon, it'll be a beautiful fluffy chicken ready for the barn yard.

On my run this morning, I found myself thinking of this powerful egg tooth again and the shell that surrounds the forming chick.  Many times circumstances in our own lives appear to surround us and keep us from the world's air and beauty of living.  What is the egg tooth for the mama worn to a frazzle, desperately wanting to escape and breathe?  Illness, finances, laundry, work, grief can all keep us surrounded and pressed in on every side.  Yet, there is a time to get beyond the circumstances and allow the transformed self to come out from the shell.  The tool is God's Word.  Corinthians tells us that the Lord will always gives us a way of escape.  The Gospels tell us to Ask, Seek, Knock and it will be given to you.

If you are feeling a bit captive today by circumstances and long for some release, run to Him alone who came to set you free indeed.

So, chickens in the yard?  Probably not.  Lessons learned from His Creation:  Always.  Have a great Monday.