From The Goldfields
God-Talk:
Sentinel Chickens
The Revd Dr Elizabeth J Smith AM Mission Priest, Parish of The Goldfields
Along with splendid vegie beds and handy herb patches, the Community Garden near my place is home to a fine collection of chooks. No two are of quite the same breed, and their varied plumage is a delight to behold.
They lead an excellent life in a veritable poultry palace, and they reward garden members with eggs that vary from large and white through medium and brown to small and bluish-green. I was asked to give a blessing to the chook pen, and to be a judge in the children’s chook poetry competition. After the festivities, a magnificent cabbage was bestowed upon me, which kept me in coleslaw for several weeks.
But these are not just your ordinary chooks, lovely to watch and generous egg-layers. They are sentinel chickens! All round Australia there are mosquito-transmitted viruses which can be very harmful and even fatal to human beings, but which don’t affect chooks at all. Staff from our local Population Health team are usually busy providing vaccines to human children and keeping an eye on the wellbeing of the whole community. They have recently acquired a new flock to tend. They regularly take a small blood sample from each of the sentinel chickens. Those blood samples are tested for any nasties which could be communicated to people. If something like Murray Valley Encephalitis shows up, we can all be warned to double our efforts to avoid mosquito bites, which means getting rid of standing water, covering up, and using mozzie repellent.
I know that the bird most closely associated with the Holy Spirit is a dove – but these sentinel chickens also remind me of the Spirit. The chooks are our early-warning system for possible danger. They help us recognise healthy from sick, risky from safe. That kind of discernment is one of the Holy Spirit’s important jobs, too.
I am completely confident that, in Jesus Christ’s victory over death, the powers of evil were defeated, once and for all. Because the light of Christ shines on us at our baptism, we will never be in spiritual darkness again. Yet every day we still have to make decisions about where our spiritual health lies. We have to say a clear ‘no’ to some activities, some people, some choices. And we want to say an enthusiastic ‘yes’ to other opportunities, other friendships, other doors that open up to us. But how do we know which is which?
We ask the Holy Spirit to be our sentinel. Jesus told us that the Spirit will lead us into all the truth. The Spirit who breathes inside us is also busy all around us, in the world, testing the trends and fashions, and identifying which ones are life-giving and which are dead-ends or potentially dangerous.
The sentinel Spirit is our wise companion, awakening us with love at the beginning of each new day, and alerting us to the right choices we are constantly having to make, for hope, health, growth, for Jesus Christ-shaped life.