“The hen died.” “Lady Cluck?” “Yeah, this morning.” My heart sank, hoping for a minute that it wasn’t true. This particular hen had been sick for a few days, and with not much in the way of treatment, considering there was no apparent reason for her illness, we cuddled her up in the garage with fresh straw and many treats to see if she’d pull through.

In the last couple years of owning chickens, this is our first hen to die, and our first chicken to die from illness. With steaming cup of coffee in hand, I sat on the couch to grieve the passing of Lady Cluck. She was a funny little character, running happily up to us in the yard to ask for a treat, scratching exuberantly in the straw and grass, and laying pretty pale pink eggs. She may have only been a chicken, but each of our animals are easily recognized and her untimely death is a bitter pill to swallow.

Her loss made me stop again to ponder on this fallen world. This place we call home is so very broken. So many of us escape to nature, seeking peace and calm, but even there sin has permeated and destroyed. The earth faces decay, disease, loss of life. Like it says in Romans 8, all creation groans under the weight of sin. A small hen, that we would call innocent, dies because we brought sin into this world. Creation awaits its own restoration eagerly, just as we await Christ’s second return.

As we come towards Easter, I can’t help but see the need for the Saviour all the more. Everything around us bears the marks of sin, impacted and pushed far from all that this world and we were supposed to be. But God made it possible for us to be right before Him, the Holy God, Creator of the universe. How is it that He sent His beloved Son here, here to this place of pain? A place aptly called the vale of tears? Because of His great love.

“This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.”
1 John 4:9-10

In spite of everything we’ve done against Him, and everything we’ve done against the creation He gave us to care for, the Creator gave us a way to be redeemed. Through Christ, and His death on the cross, we have been made right before the Father. We have the hope of eternity, that we will leave this painful world behind and live in the presence of God forever.

So, I feel a bittersweet assurance as I wait to celebrate the resurrection of the Saviour. A small chicken’s death may show me our broken world more clearly and fill me with sorrow at all we have lost, but I also have the hope of all that God has given us, and will give us in the new heaven and earth.

When those small sorrows come your way, those daily reminders that this world has fallen, may you see all the more clearly the wonderful, surpassing love of our Saviour. Good Friday has already come, and while we mourn Christ’s death now, we wait for tomorrow and the remembrance and celebration of His resurrection. 

“As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath. But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions-it is by grace you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith-and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God-not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”
Ephesians 2:1-10