As A Hen Protects Her Chicks

O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones God’s messengers! How often I have wanted to gather your children together as a hen protects her chicks beneath her wings, but you wouldn’t let me. Luke 13:34

MERRIAM-WEBSTER’S DICTIONARY defines a mother hen as “a person who worries about, cares for, or watches over other people in a way that is annoying or unwanted.” Certainly this is not how we as parents want to care for our children. Instead, we want to be mother hens in the way that God describes himself. Throughout the Bible, God uses the familiar imagery of a hen that gathers her chicks under her wings to provide protection from danger. It’s a picture of shielding the chicks with her own body to preserve their lives.

Oh, how deep is our instinct to draw our children to ourselves to try to protect them from every threat. And, oh, how typical the tendency is for our children to assume they need no protection. They want to take their chances out in the world on their own, apart from our careful watch and covering.

We should probably take away two things from this picture. When we long for our children to come in close so that we can protect them, we’re parenting them the way God parents us. This impulse is God-given and God-like. Chicks are meant to look to their parents for protection. But we must also recognize that there is a far greater security that can only be provided to our children by God himself. Christ is like that hen we see gathering her chicks under her wings. Only he can shield us from the wrath of God. Christ has provided the protection needed for all who will come under the shelter of his wings. He absorbed the wrath of God so that we, and our children, might be protected.

Lord, as ________ hears you calling out to come to you, won’t you break through every strain of resistance and independence? Give ________ a healthy and right fear of you so that he will see his need for protection. Give ________ a longing for you so that there is nowhere he would rather be than under the shelter of your wings.