Rescue

In the industry, we call it litter, or chicken litter. As foul as it may be to a first timer, if you have to live close to it or work in it, you pretty much get used to it. Maintenance of this flooring was important as it affected the chicken’s health. So, it had to be stirred ever so frequently to prevent it from getting solid and changed out completely depending on the type of litter that a farm was using. The part I detested the most was having to take out litter that got soaked by some busted pipeline or roof leak after a heavy rainstorm. When there was wet litter we had to take it out with wheelbarrows. Soupy, filthy and ridiculously stink. Hated it. Then along came September 12th, 1988.

My father watched Gilberts’s category 3 winds pull one of the houses to the ground. We were especially perplexed because the chickens were quite small at time. They were about two weeks old, still had those small fuzzy yellow feathers. After the storm passed us, there were quite a few chickens that survived in the collapsed building. The bottom of the roof though was just a few inches above the wet, putrid, stinky litter. As I was there thinking to myself, there is noooooo way I’m going under there to get ANY of those live chickens I remember someone who came to visit us from the community to help with the damage. Just out of the blue, he volunteered to rescue the chicks. My eyes popped open as he went under and skillfully, handful by handful, took out the ones that survived the storm.

That image has stayed with me for decades. Every time I remember it, I think of Jesus—stepping into the filth, the stench, the decay of a broken world to rescue His beloved from the wreckage of sin. How can you not love a Being like this? Over time, we grow numb to sin’s corrosion, until tragedy shakes us awake—a pickup truck mowing down the innocent, a baby stolen too soon, an evil regime erasing generations. For a moment, we see sin for what it is—raw, ruthless, relentless. But may we never let our hearts dull to the weight of His sacrifice. This rescue was not cheap. It was purchased with a love so vast, so unfathomable, that eternity itself will not be long enough to grasp its depth.

— YorkAli Walters