When I was small, my parents would read to us each night for family devotions. I don’t remember all the details, but I remember the story of a hen. It’s an old parable handed down for years, and it has stuck with me for decades now.
It’s the story of a mother hen who lived on a farm with her chicks, and there was a brush fire that swept through the barnyard. The mother hen, knowing she could not outrun the fire, surrounded her babies with her own wings, covering them as the fire passed over. She died in that fire, but her chicks lived, safe under the protection of their mother’s love. What a picture of Christ’s love for us! A love so great that He sacrificed His own precious life for us.