Eggs

I had eggs for breakfast today; really special eggs.

Last spring my Kindergartners hatched chicks as we always do. And as usual, a good percentage of them hatched and we enjoyed the noisy little yellow fur balls for a week or so before they went to live at the farm.

Also, as usual, the last few eggs to hatch weren’t quite normal. One of the last to hatch seemed healthy and alert but struggled to stand. The kids were very concerned about him. “Miss McMillan! What’s wrong? He can’t stand up!”

I picked him up and saw that his little hips and legs had formed badly. His tiny legs stuck out to each side, leaving him incapable of any movement except flapping his little wings and rolling on his tiny little bottom. I knew that in any other circumstance he would just be put out of his misery and discarded. But the little brown and blue and green and hazel eyes watching my every move demanded that I intervene.

He objected loudly as I took some yarn and tied his two legs together into their proper position. When I sat him down, he flipped around to free himself and then, as chickens are wont to do, the strong healthy ones surrounded and started pecking him. The horrified children cried, “Miss McMillan! What are they doing?! They’re killing him!”

So I intervened again, this time making a little cardboard triangle only big enough for him to stand. I tied his legs together and put him in his frame. Every few hours I took him out for food and water, then put him back. By evening he was standing on his own, and after a few days of solitary confinement, he was strong enough to join the other little chickens.

When it came time for them to go to the farm, I wanted this little guy to go somewhere special. My student Rose, whose Mom has chickens, had gotten attached to him, so for the first time ever, I sent a baby chick home with a student.

Rose and her Mom kept me updated on the little chick as he grew. As it turns out, he is actually a she. Rose named her chicken Karen. Six months later, Karen has survived attacks from a neighborhood fox and early summer flooding to become a productive little layer.

When Rose’s Mom stopped by my classroom with six perfect eggs on Friday, I was so excited. She’d been collecting them all week for me. It felt a little wrong to eat them, but I didn’t want little Karen’s efforts to be in vain, so I boiled them today and sure enough, they were delicious!

Logic and reason and common sense and economics and pragmatism are unanimous in their conclusion that a weak little chick is a waste of time and energy. No effort or resources should be expended on such an expendable creature. My logic would assume that the most important being in the universe would also feel the same way, but our God is wiser than my logic and so much kinder than my best intentions.

He says, “Aren’t two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them falls to the ground without your Father’s consent…So don’t be afraid therefore; you are worth more than many sparrows.” Matthew 10:29, 31. In other words, “I saw these little chicks forming in their eggs. I was fully aware which would be healthy and which would be weak. If I care about chicks, do you have anything to fear? You are far more valuable to me than a little baby chicken.”

There is a “little chick” living at my house right now. I can’t tell you her whole story (I don’t even know it all myself), but the result of other people’s destructive choices has left her with multiple diagnoses and disorders. She is fragile and difficult and exhausting and of little value to a consumer-driven, capitalistic society. Even well-intentioned Christians have suggested that my efforts would be better spent on someone else (I hate to admit I’ve had the same feeling the middle of some of her fear-driven rage battles).

But the God who made her, the God who made me, the God who made Karen the chicken says, “She is of infinite value and and worth to me. She is made in my image, she has worth and purpose and a future.” And He is trusting me to make a safe place for her and tie together her broken parts. Her fragile life is in my hands and I fail her so many times. I am imperfect and short-tempered and sometimes unkind. But she is forgiving and learning to trust and learning that is is loved and wanted.

Those breakfast eggs give me hope. They give me tangible proof that my girl will grow and blossom and break the cycles that have bound her family for generations. She is the beginning of a new kind of family – restored and healthy and producing life where only death was expected.
I am in love with this God who is at His best when he takes the broken and discarded and transforms them into magnificent treasures. His kingdom makes no sense, but His joy fills my heart and gives me courage to battle the scars, bind the wounds, and calm the rage as my little chick becomes who she was created to be.