My brother and I had finished our morning chores of caring for the farm animals, and so Dad gave us another job to do. Being a beautiful day, he told us to mow the field of alfalfa east of the house. It makes good hay for the milk cows to eat.
We were using an old steel-wheeled mower behind the tractor. I was sitting on the mower’s seat with the field about half mowed. Suddenly I saw some feathers come up through the newly cut hay! I shouted for my brother to STOP! We went back and parted the hay around the feathers, and there we discovered the mower had killed a mother pheasant that had been sitting on her eggs. We felt pretty bad about the poor pheasant, especially when we counted 17 warm, olive-green eggs in the nest.
“Now, what should we do with the eggs?” we wondered out loud. We immediately thought of the bantam hen we had in the hog barn back near the house. She was always sitting on eggs, but they never hatched because there was no rooster around. We could put these 17 warm, pheasant eggs in her nest for her to hatch, as if they were her own eggs. She wouldn’t know the difference! So that was our plan.
We quickly and carefully put the 17 eggs in my brother’s cap and went back to the hog barn where the bantam hen was sitting on her own eggs. We quickly lifted her off her nest and put her in the top of a barrel of water so she was out of our way. Have you ever heard the saying “madder than a wet hen”? Yep, she was really mad! Chickens don’t like to get wet, but it didn’t hurt her any and gave us time to take her no-good eggs out of the nest and carefully put the warm olive-green pheasant eggs in the nest. By the time the hen dried off a bit, the eggs were ready for her to sit on, and that’s just what she did. She sat on the new eggs and never knew the difference.
In just a few days, those 17 pheasant eggs hatched, and they looked just like baby bantams. They were so cute with their light-brown, soft fluff with little black stripes.
The mother bantam took good care of the baby pheasants and took them out of the barn for picking things off the ground. There were always some spilled bits of grain around to eat. In the evening, and sometimes even during the day, she covered them under her wings for protection. At night she took them back to her nest. She would cluck to them, and they would come and stay under her wings. She was a good little mother for them.
As the little pheasants grew, their legs got longer and longer. Because they were wild by nature, they would go off and she would cluck to them to call them back. But soon they would not come back. They had a different nature than the bantam hen that took care of them. They were pheasants and would fly off into the wild. Even though the bantam hen and the baby pheasants were all birds, they were very different.
Boys and girls, all of us are sinners. Some of you may have a different color of skin, and some of you may live in different countries. God loves all of you, but the problem every one of us has is our sins. He cannot accept us into His perfect home in heaven with our sins. He tells us in the Bible: “There is no difference: for all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:22-23).
God and His Son Jesus decided on a plan so that we sinners could have our sins washed away. Then we would be ready to live in God’s perfect heaven with our Savior Jesus when our lives here on earth are finished. The plan They made was very, very costly. Jesus, God’s only Son, would become a baby born here on earth and would grow up to be a perfect Man. He was sinless and that is why He could become the sacrifice to cleanse away the sins of any boy or girl or man or woman who would believe that He is God’s Son. Each person needs to talk to Jesus about his or her sins, asking Him to wash those sins away in His blood. “The blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin” (1 John 1:7). Those who take this step will want to live for Him and thank Him forever in heaven.
If you haven’t accepted Jesus as your Savior yet, don’t wait any longer. Talk to Him today!
MEMORY VERSE: “There is no difference: for all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.” Romans 3:22-23
ML-03/19/2017