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December
Advice
I Love You

November
38. Bald is beautiful
37. Fire
36 Sleep
35 Music

October 2006
34. Stupidity
33. Painting
32. mmm Pasties
31. Built to last
30. Phlegm

September 2006
29. Meetings
28. Crime thoughts
27. Colours
26. Unwanted guests

August 2006
25. Comparison
24. Waterproof Mascara
23. Tasty MSG
22. Helplessness

July 2006
21. Attraction
20. Hair
19. Hero
18. Laughter
17. Factoids

June 2006
16. Voiceless
15. Bruises (ouch)
14. Sunburn
13. Mistakes

May 2006
12. Arms
11. Willow Tree
10. Eurovision
9. Chicken
8. Addictions
 

April 2006
7. Age
6. Celebrities
5. Language

March 2006
4. Commonwealth Games
3. Decisions
2. Drizzle
1. Trelawney

Chickens

I have chickens. Did you know that? No, me neither! Confused? Well so are the poor chickens! Here’s the story:

 At the back of my house are some fields, the closest ones contain horses and a family of three ducks and two white geese. Over the last couple of weeks there have appeared some little chickens. These little birds are black and fluffy, or I am reliably told, ‘downy’. They look so cute – their actually bodies are quite small but their excessive feather cover makes them look quite porky. Ah the joys of spring and new life!

 Well these chickens are still small enough to get through the fence and have been seen wandering around the houses and in and out of the gardens on my row. Yesterday morning I was rudely awoken by the screech of one of these birds (not so cute now – did they not know it was the weekend and therefore a chance to lie-in!!) who was stood in my overgrown garden desperately calling out to announce its presence. I stood at my window watching for a few minutes before regaining my position in bed! As I left to go to church a few hours later I noticed something under my back hedge. Two freshly laid eggs. All excited I gathered them up and took them inside. Mmm, a tasty omelette for lunch!

 Actually I was a little unsure of whether I could eat them, as the chicken doesn’t look fully growed up and so I called my parents, the founts of all knowledge, for advice. My dad (who has had experience with rearing chickens) was unhelpfully out. My mum, after establishing that I hadn’t mistaken them for the tiny blue blackbird’s eggs (how stupid does she think I am! Actually, don’t answer that!), tried to convince me that eating them would be cruel to the chicken. She then had to go to put the pork chops in the oven! This morning I got up, after a well deserved lie-in, to discover that I had another present from my chicken friend. Yay! An even bigger omelette beckons for lunch!

 Now I don’t know if the chicken will continue to lay her precious eggs in my overgrown back garden or whether this has been a lovely short term gift, but it got me thinking about where we put the stuff of our lives. My garden is by far the messiest and most untidy garden in the row, or perhaps in Wakefield, and if the ‘Ground Force’ team or even better, the ‘City Gardener’ want to do it up for me I would graciously let them transform it. But it has been my garden, amongst the weeds, the knee high grass and the unattractiveness that this chicken has laid her precious eggs. In a similar way, it is in the broken, the messed up, the least likely that Jesus comes to live among. God placed His most precious gift, His only son, to live with the least attractive people (meaning the rejected, the broken, the unwanted, and not the ugly!). Jesus gave His most precious gift, His life, that the broken would become whole again, that the rejected would be included and so that we might know what it is to be loved, blessed and truly forgiven. What a gift in the most unlikely place to the most unlikely people. 

So this week, while eating your egg products, think about where you want to place you’re most precious gift, your heart. Will it be in something that looks nice, something that fits with society, something that is safe, or will you place it in the brokenness of the cross? 

Take Care, Nat xxx