The Hen They Found After the Fire

In 2012, a wildfire swept through the foothills outside Colorado Springs, consuming over 340 homes in the Waldo Canyon blaze. When a rancher returned to survey the charred remains of his property, he found one of his hens lying dead in the yard, her feathers burned away, her body stiff and blackened. But when he gently lifted her, three living chicks scrambled out from beneath her wings. She had refused to fly. She had gathered them under her body and stayed.

That image is not an accident in scripture. When Jesus looked out over Jerusalem — the city that would soon demand His crucifixion — He did not reach for the language of a warrior or a king. He reached for this: "How often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings."

He knew what Herod wanted. He knew what the cross would cost. And like that hen in the Colorado ash, He refused to fly. He refused to abandon the very people who would reject Him.

The tragedy Jesus names is not the threat of death. It is the five most heartbreaking words in the Gospels: "and you were not willing." The Almighty spread His wings over Jerusalem, over you, over me — and the only force in the universe that can stop that sheltering love is our own refusal to come underneath it.

The wings are still open. The invitation still stands.