The Chicken Story

My grandmother would get very embarrassed when we as children would ask her to tell us "The Chicken Story". She would have much rather we asked her to read us Snow White or Rin Tin Tin than repeat that silly old thing again and again. Yet that is the one story we all wanted to hear time and time again because it was such an awesome thing. It was full of wonder and excitement to us when her voice would tremble or raise in surprise while she recounted this tale of our dad's childhood trauma with his pet chicken.

The story takes place some time after Easter when Dad was just a boy. He had received the chicken as an Easter surprise, and had taken to raising it in the bathroom until it was old enough to fend for itself in the Texas out doors. (Now, I don't know about yours, but my dad doesn't move very fast unless there is a fish on the reel, or he is chasing Oscar who is escaping out the front door that he forgot to close; so this tale about my dad has always intrigued me... )

Here my dad is at the age of seven or eight(I am not really sure about that though...Ok, its official... Dad said he was about 4 or 5), running through the house to see his chicken, and not watching what he is doing, or thinking about what could happen. So in his excitement, he slammed the bathroom door open with youthful exuberance, and smashed the poor dear chicken between the door and the wall. A lot could be said right here about the carelessness of youth, and the naivety of the young, but I think its really self explanatory at the moment.

Dad, however, didn't wail and cry or sulk for days over his dead chicken. Instead he did something that many of us at his age probably would not have thought of. He went and got his momma and asked her to pray for his dead chicken. I know I certainly would not have thought of it at all, and neither would my brother or sister. We, collectively, would have howled heaven down upon our shoulders with grief and tears. Nothing would have soothed our broken hearts at the knowledge that we had done harm to our pet, and none of us would have probably thought to pray... Sad thought, isn't it?

Now this is the part where Ma-maw would get embarrassed and hurry on through the story. She was trying to sooth my dad, and at the same time prepare him for the future without his chicken. So she knelt down and prayed. She prayed for my dad, for my uncle, for her friends and family, for the needs in her community, for those who needed healing, for anything else she could think of, except the chicken laying dead on the bathroom floor. But Dad didn't know that. All he knew was that his Momma had prayed, and when she prayed something happened.

So when Ma-maw wiped her eyes and said, "In Jesus name, Amen," Dad jumped up and ran back into the bathroom, expecting to see his chicken bopping around like chickens do. However, the chicken was still dead on the bathroom floor. To hear Dad tell it at this point, he was boiling mad. His Momma had prayed for that chicken, and he knew that when you got prayed for then God made everything alright. So in his indignation at said chicken, he swung back his foot and kicked it up against the wall, shouting, "Get up you dumb chicken! Don't you know you've been prayed for!"

The chicken slid down that wall, flopped on the floor, and let out a squawk of chickenish affrontery, stood up, and lived a very happy chicken life afterward.

Sometimes I think we as people are that way.

When things happen that we have no control over, we either stop and die in our tracks, or cower down. When people pray for us, we don't even acknowledge the faith, or we express our disbelief that we could be healed or helped miraculously.

Sometimes God has to deliver a swift kick to our systems to get us back on the right track, like my dad's pet chicken. Just imagine what our lives could be like if we grasped the concept that when we call for the elders of the church for prayer, that something is going to happen. Imagine what it would be like if Christians started believing that God still heals the sick, and can bring back to life the dead. Sometimes we just need a swift kick from God to think things through properly...


Mark 16:17, 18

"These signs will accompany those who have believed: in My name they will cast out demons, they will speak with new tongues; they will pick up serpents, and if they drink any deadly poison, it will not hurt them; they will lay hands on the sick, and they will recover."