..."cock-a-doodle-do..."

My youngest has always been an early riser....


Our baby woke at 5:09 a.m. early one morning this week… only this time he isn’t an infant… he is now 6 years-old...


His kindergarten class had gotten chicken eggs and they were incubating them for a science experiemnt.  He wanted to be the first one in class so a chick might 'imprint' him....


You know how ducks & geese imprint? .... following around the first being they see, usually their mama... I suppose baby chicks can to.... he made me promise that if one imprints on him, he can bring it home at the end of the school year.... I worry that he may become hor dorves for the neighborhood felines....


What 6 year-old knows this much about imprinting?  My son has an amazing mind.... wise beyond his years....


A few weeks ago, I TeVo'd an old movie from 1996..."Fly Away Home" were a girl incubates Canadian geese eggs & teaches them to fly... eventually flying them in an ultra-light plane from Ontario, Canada to Florida.

What a precious little boy my youngest is...  to wish for a baby chick to imprint him & follow him everywhere….

The science experiement came from Purdue University, part of extension education…. Inside the incubator were a dozen or so chicken eggs.  What an amazing science lesson… what an amazing lesson in life…. A few eggs didn’t hatch… a few didn’t make it, dying within the first 24 hours of their short life…. This is the cycle of life… survival of the fittest…

Friday morning when my youngest woke with the sunrise…. He asked my husband if his mill-store-front sold chicken wire… we could see the wheels turning in his head… he wants a pet baby chick… I asked the kindergarten teacher what they were going to do with the chicks when school lets out…. “Adoption papers” are being sent home with every kindergartner.  We are going to be away from home a total of 5 cumulative weeks this summer…. We have coyotes in our neighborhood woods… a chick wouldn’t get the tender love and care they deserve and would need to survive on our ranch….

I stopped in the classroom Friday morning to give reading tests, the final reading tests of the year…. 

The class was huddled around the Rubbermaid tote, heat lamp shining on all of them… they are enamored with their classroom pets…  one child was telling me he had figured out where a certain chick was ticklish. They have been the caregivers... they have fed .... and watered... and loved those chicks.


Thinking of birds imprinting has me thinking about how maybe we should imprint the Lord...


He meets our every need.... He gives drink, earthly H2O and the living water... He gives us food, both to sustain our bodies and the bread of life for our souls... He placed a gigantic heat lamp in the sky to warm us, start and end our days and He have us the SON to light our hearts and lives...


So why don't we 'imprint' the Lord, as a baby bird does it's mother?  The Lord created us with a God shaped hole... it can only be filled by him, by pursuing a personal relationship with him... it can't be filled with food, clothing, houses, furniture, cars, boats, vacations, .... the list could go on and on....


As humans, it is in our nature to try to fill that void with things... with stuff... with too-much-too-much-ness... but what we really need is Him... what He really wants is for us to take the steps to be in a deeper relationship with Him...

So ... have you 'imprinted' the Lord? ... following Him ... being in His word? ... talking to Him in prayer... "listening"  (you don't dial the phone, rattle of a list of request & hang up on the person you called) ...


...letting Him guide you, all the days of your life? ....