Loving Like A Mom Does

Loving Like a Mom Does

Intro: The more I read and study the Bible, the more I find that deals with every area of our lives. God is the one who created motherhood, so it is not surprising that the Bible covers some of the struggles that moms face. In addition to all the references in the book of Proverbs about a wise son making his mama proud, we find mothers who lose their husbands and the grief that follows (Naomi, Anna, other widows, Mary). We read of mothers who lose a child (Eve, Naomi, Mary, and others). There are mothers with wayward sons and mothers with sons who hated each other. There were women who could not have children of their own, and some were surprised to become mothers in their old age.

-Mothers in the Bible did (and moms today do) learn to deal with disappointment and with loss. Moms have to learn how to deal with stress and problems on every front. Maybe that is why Moms are some of the most prayerful people I know. Honestly, just think about the people you’ve known who really knew how to pray and made it such a priority in their lives. Many of those people were likely moms, or at least had a mother’s heart that caused them to care enough to pray for others. Please don’t think that I’m saying that Dads don’t have caring hearts. I know many who do, and our Father God certainly does. However, I believe there is a sense in which God was revealing His own nature when He created male and female. God Himself is above gender, but the genders seem to tell us something about the nature of God.

-Now, I’m going to take what seems like a left turn and talk about chickens for a few minutes. Let me point out that there are a lot of admirable qualities in chickens. Here are some interesting facts about chickens.

Little Known Chicken Facts

#1 Chickens are pretty fast. The chicken can travel up to 9 miles per hour when it wants to.

#2 The largest ever recorded chicken egg weighed nearly 12 ounces, and measured 12.25 inches around.

#3 Chicken language has real meanings. The birds give different alarm calls depending on which type of predator is threatening them.

#4 There are more chickens on Earth than there are humans.

#5 Chickens can cross breed with turkeys. The result is called a ’Turkin’.

#6 There are four cities in the United States that have the word "chicken" in their name: Chicken, Alaska; Chicken Bristle, Illinois; Chicken Bristle, Kentucky; and Chicken Town, Pennsylvania.

#7 The greatest number of yolks ever found in a single chicken egg was nine!

#8 Chickens experience REM (rapid eye movement) sleep. (I wonder what they dream about?)

#9 The chicken is the closest living relative of the tyrannosaurus-rex.

#10 In Gainesville, Georgia, (the chicken capital of the world), a local ordinance makes it illegal to eat your chicken with a fork.

#11 The waste produced by one chicken in its lifetime can supply enough electricity to run a 100 watt bulb for five hours.

#12 China has the most people in the world, *and* also has the most chickens. There are over 3,000,000,000 chickens in China! (The United States has only 450 million.)

#13 The longest recorded distance flown by any chicken was 301.5 feet.

#14 The record for laying the most eggs in one day was seven.

#15 There are more chickens in the world than there are of any other domesticated bird. In fact, there’s more than one chicken for every human on the face of this earth.

#16 Chickens can fly, but not for long. The longest recorded flight of a chicken is only thirteen seconds.

#17 A chicken will lay bigger and stronger eggs if you adjust the lighting in their cages to make them think each day is 28 hours long, instead of 24.

#18 Chickens eggs come in colors sometimes, (other than white and brown). Some breeds lay eggs in shades of blue or green. Ready-made Easter Eggs!

#19 The fear of chickens is called ’Alektorophobia’.

#20 Laid head to claw, all the chickens consumed from KFC worldwide would circle the Earth at the equator 11 times. (www.associatedcontent.com)

-The reason I’m talking about chickens this morning is because Jesus did. He made at least one reference, and possibly a second, to chickens in the Bible. Besides having created chickens (or their ancestors), Jesus likely grew up with chickens running around His neighborhood. Other writings from the time period in which Jesus lived on this earth document the established presence of chickens and eggs – although none of them tell us which came first.

-Jesus often used common ordinary examples from daily life to present truth to people. So it was no real surprise when He used the example of a mother hen gathering her chicks close to herself for protection and comfort.