Chicken Chaser

A few years ago, my wife had the privilege of watching our 3 granddaughters, ages six, four and two, for four days a week.  On clear days she loved to take them outside to play on the playground in our back yard.  Also in the back yard were more than a dozen free-range chickens.  The two older girls had no fear of the chickens, but the youngest, Nora, was nearly petrified of them.  She was nearly three years old, but the sight of the chickens running toward her sent her clinging and climbing on the nearest adult; most often my wife. 

My wife, in an attempt to encourage Nora, gave her a stick to shoo away the chickens, but it was far from intimidating to them.  She, wanting Nora to overcome her fear, then asked me to help.  I looked around our basement and found a piece of pipe insulation about three feet long.  I grabbed it, dusted it off, and headed toward Nora.  I called to her and she immediately ran to me. 

“Nora,” I said, “I found you a chicken chaser!  When the chickens come to you, just wave the chicken chaser at them and they’ll run away.”

“Ok,” she replied, as she took the newfound power into her little hands. Then turning to the chickens, she waved the pipe insulation at them and giggled as the immediately scattered. 

She looked back at me and said, “Thank you, Grampa Tim, for my chicken chaser!”  as she wielded the foam tube as if she were a knight slaying torturous dragons.

I thought of what this simple piece of foam meant to this little girl.  She was now able to overcome her fear of these scary birds by holding onto this chicken chaser.  I didn’t give her any super power, nor did I lock up the chickens so that they weren’t around her, but I provided her with something that she could trust to keep the chickens away.  This enabled her to have courage to face the chickens.

In each of our lives, we face fears.  There are those who are afraid of crowds, some are afraid of open spaces, others of dogs, and so on.  Imagine if a fireman were afraid of fire.  How would he be able to run into a burning building to rescue someone?  It isn’t a natural instinct for someone to run into fire; our instinct tells us to run away from it.  It’s when we have the power and courage to overcome our fears that we run into the building, casting off the care of our own safety and stretching out of our comfort zones to rescue another.

The Bible tells us in Deuteronomy 31:6:  Be strong and of a good courage, fear not, nor be afraid of them: for the Lord thy God, he it is that doth go with thee; he will not fail thee, nor forsake thee.  [KJV]  Wow!  What a promise!  If we put our trust in Almighty God, He will be our chicken chaser, or more correctly, our fear chaser! His power is at our disposal, provided we do what He commands us to do.  (We can’t steal a car and expect God to bless us from its sale.)

In Ephesians 6, Paul refers to a “sword of the Spirit.”  When we grab onto this sword and wield it at our fears, they are dispersed and we are freed from them, just as this little girl was able to wield her chicken chaser to disperse the chickens.  We are empowered by the Lord to overcome our own instinctual fears and to fight the evil that would inhibit us from accomplishing His will.