“How often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing.” Luke 13:34
Parents and all those in authority are used to taking care of everyone else, so it’s often hard to allow someone else to take care of us, even God. Why were the Jews unwilling to allow God to intimately care for them as He longed to do? I think it was because it meant they would have to humble themselves and admit they were really just vulnerable little chicks who needed to be taken care of.
We pride ourselves in America on our ability to be independent. The books on success encourage us to tell ourselves we are strong and can do anything we set our mind to do. But the truth is that we are not strong in ourselves, and we aren’t mother hens who are able to take care of everyone else. We too, are only little chicks, who need to be gathered under the wings of God.
Isn’t it awesome that the all sufficient One has a longing at all? He has a longing we can meet by simply acknowledging we are not as important as we thought, we aren’t as smart as we appear, and we are not as invincible as we would want everyone else to believe. We are in fact, like little chicks who need to be gathered under the wings of our Savior to simply be held and protected by Him. Could there be a more intimate picture than a chick being hidden in the secret place of its mother’s wings? God longs to have you and I that close to Him.
I love this truth even though I easily forget it. I often pray something like this, “Lord, here I am, your little chick. Go ahead and meet the longing of Your heart by holding me. Go ahead and do what you’ve been waiting to do, pour out your grace upon me.” David prayed along these lines in Psalm 61:4: “I long to dwell in your tent forever and take refuge in the shelter of your wings.” Is it any wonder he is remembered as the man after God’s own heart, when His longing to dwell under God’s wing was matched by God’s longing to gather him to that place of intimate care?
Maybe you’ve been weary taking care of everyone else and today you need to let God take care of you. Why don’t you pray right now and ask Him.
One Thing 