Going to the Roost

Chickens on the farm provide fresh eggs.  Nothing like picking up eggs from the nest one day and eating them for breakfast the next morning.  Those birds also range across the place making a pass each day in the garden where they do a little bug control work.  The ones around here seem to enjoy following us around clucking and making chicken noises as they go.  In order to be good company, I have learned to mimic them which, perhaps, means I have learned a few chicken words. 

 

These chickens of ours do more than provide breakfast and entertainment.  They also teach lessons about living.  One of the lessons is taught each evening as they go back into the chicken house for the night.  They have no clocks in the chicken pen, but every evening as the darkness gets ready to settle over the farm, they head for the roost.  They work all day.  They are constantly scratching in the dirt and eating stuff I cannot see,  but as evening comes they go into rest mode as they settle on the roost.

As I reflect  back over the years, I see too many times when I lived out of sync with what was happening in the creation.  So often the creation was gearing down, darkness was settling in announcing the work day was done, and I kept going.  Getting ahead and the opinion of others was more important than self care which is what the coming darkness invites us to do.  The chickens know when it is time to call it a day and go to the roost.  Our Creator God brought a creation into being which includes the same signals for creatures like you and me so we would know when it was time to go to the roost.  Too many times I just paid no attention to the clock of creation.  Maybe one day I will be able to live more like a chicken.