Life Matters - February 7, 2024
As a four-year-old boy, growing up on the crop and dairy farm of my fortunate upbringing, I was blessed with a secure, stable home life supplied by Dat, Mam, older siblings and a little brother barely two years younger than I. But I did have a rather confusing love/hate relationship. With a beautiful, colorful, bantam rooster. I knew exactly where he spent every night, settling down on a beam supporting the joists of the barn loft frame every evening after a footloose day of roaming our barn and barnyard. Every morning, he heralded the rising sun. His reddish-orange breast and neck feathers with black and white tips rippling and draping over black wing feathers, bluish-gray-green plumage covering his back and upper thighs, with orange feathers extending below, his tail feathers so black they shimmered blue, his bright red comb and wattle was a kaleidoscope of color that glistened in the outdoor sunlight or when shining a flashlight up at him in his nightly repose. I loved that rooster. I admired him. From a distance.
He may have had some fighting cock genes as he would even run at big, strong Dat, fluttering and pecking at the booted foot that came up to stop him. That manly looking trick didn’t work for me, hence the distance. The colorful rooster seemed to sense my fear of him and took to chasing me. I knew there was real trouble brewing the day I first noticed his head come up and his strutting begin when he heard the spring-loaded screen door slam. But I learned to live with it by keeping an eye on the shimmering critter, or else when I forgot and he came after me, to run for the safety of our solid brick farmhouse, little farm boy legs pumping so fast, that well…it puts me in mind of a 1954 sports announcer recorded excitedly describing the speed of the runner who’d just broken a previous record: “Not since pre-historic man dropped out of a tree and took off with a saber-toothed tiger at his heels has anyone run the mile in less than 4 minutes!” In my terror-driven streaks to the house I feel a certain kinship with that terrorized “prehistoric man.”
In our solid, secure brick farmhouse with its wrap-around porch we ate three meals a day and, especially breakfast and supper, we ate together as a family. Meat, potatoes, vegetables, and a dessert were regular supper staples at our house, and I have a clear memory-picture in my brain of one particular evening when the supper menu included chicken, roasted to mouth-watering perfection. Then, as now, I like chicken and when Dat raised his head after prayer, I was the first to get a piece as the platter was right in front of me. As I bit into it and was chewing the first delectable bite, big brother Leroy spoke up, “Emanuel,” he said, “Do you know who you’re eating?” Who? What? I looked up puzzled. Mam said, “Shhh,” a sister said, “Leroy!” Suddenly I knew. It was too late. They had butchered my rooster.
Tears welled up in my eyes. That beautiful rooster. The lump in my throat…I couldn’t chew…much less swallow…I slid off the bench, shuffled to the bathroom and flushed the offensive, delectable, morsel down the toilet. I assume now that brother Leroy meant well and thought his little brother should have the pleasure of knowing he was chewing on meat that helped propel the fear propelling me toward the house. But back then…I didn’t think that far.
I think farther now than I used to. And read now as I couldn’t back then. My thinking and my reading are persuading me that those of us admiring digital technology, and those of us who don’t, should be aware and not be surprised if it sometime in the not-so-distant future is turned against us by those desiring to bring us into bondage through the fear of man. Our Father God has a plan. “He plants His footsteps in the sea, and rides upon the storm.” The devil may flutter and peck, but he will not prevail against God, with whom we are safe. Without God we must outrun the saber-toothed tiger by ourselves for ‘’the devil walketh about, as a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour.” (1 Peter 5:8) But by the grace of God we can “resist the devil and he will flee from you, draw nigh to God and He will draw nigh to you.” (James 4:7)
May our ‘’running’’ take us to God’s house: He gives us this consoling promise in Luke 12:32, “Fear not, little flock; for it is the Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” Jesus taught us to pray; ‘’Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name, Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven, give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us, and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil, for thine is the kingdom, the power, the glory forever Amen.’’
Life Matters!