Hey- thanks for visiting. I’m making some videos since it’s a bit easier to watch and listen while you’re doing other things. Enjoy! Here is the video version…Little Gifts Unwrapped: Frisco eats Chirp
And here is the written version:
It was Easter weekend and my eight year old daughter and I decided we wanted to become urban chicken farmers. The idea of chickens roaming our back yard making eggs for our breakfast seemed lovely. The notion that our black lab may be a problematic variable crossed my mind, but I was sure that I could convince him that Chickens were our friends, not food.
We went to the farm and feed supply store and picked out our little chicks. Evelyn named them, Cheep, Chirp and Loudy. On the ride home she cuddled them, cooed over them and was generally smitten with their cuteness. I dropped her off at a play date while I set up the new coop.
I brought the chicks inside the house to keep them warm and went back out to the garage to get the supplies. From the garage, I heard a crash. I knew immediately that the unthinkable had occurred- that the beast had attacked our new pets. I screamed and ran into the house, where I found a lifeless, slobbery chick laying at the foot of my crazed, wild eyed black lab. I ordered him outside to finish the job he’d started and I rushed to save the survivors. It looked like Cheep and Loudy made it. After securing their safety in a locked car, I made a few phone calls to some chicken farmers so I could find them a new home.
Gone were the urban chicken farmer dreams. The chicken infanticide happened on good Friday. I knew I had to break the news to Evelyn. I picked her up from her play date and carefully explained that our HOA would not allow chickens in our neighborhood. I thought I may be able to get away with not telling her the whole truth. She furrowed her brow and said, “Our neighbors already do it. W should just do it and not tell the HOA.” She knew this is what I was planning to do anyway. Then I said,” well, there is one other reason we can’t have our chicks. Frisco ate one.”
Oh, the weeping, the mourning, the tears as she accepted the truth of what happened. Then I told her that I had to find a new home for the chicks at a nice farm up the road. And Evelyn said with a flash of anger, “We should have found Frisco a new home, and kept the chicks!”
Nothing would console her. All day Saturday she refused to even look at our dog. Imagining him eating one of her precious little chicks was too much for her. That night, she and I watched an animal show on television and it had a segment on birds. Frisco was laying on the floor underneath our feet. There was some cheeping from the television, and he immediately perked up and started hunting! Like Pavlov’s dog, he was conditioned that cheeping sounds meant a delicious snack! That just poured salt in Evelyn’s wound.
By Easter morning, she came to me and said, “I think it’s time that I forgive Frisco. He was just doing what dogs do.”
Nothing could bring the chick back, but because of forgiveness, a girl and her dog could be friends again. God invented this transformative concept of forgiveness that has the power to mend what’s been broken. Because of Jesus’ sacrificial love, losing all so we could gain, creating a means by which we can have relationship restoration, we can be restored to God. The things we do because of our humanness, won’t separate us from God anymore. God freely offers us forgiveness. We can say to other people who hurt us, “I think it’s time to forgive. They were just doing what humans do.”
Ephesians 1:7 and 8 says, “In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace that he lavished on us with all wisdom and understanding.”
As we receive this grace for ourselves, we are better able to offer it to the people around us.