Then after a little bit, I saw something that looked like a ferret run across the yard. I pointed it out, thinking I had never seen a ferret in the wild before. My husband instantly thought of the chickens. He ran over to their coop and saw many dead- and the Mink not ferret fighting the Rooster. He called for help. I ran over there- a city girl at heart wondering what I might do. Mostly I just stood back and cheered him on. He chased the Mink back and forth until he had caught it and killed it.
As I looked at the sad scene before me- chicken feathers, dead chickens, dead pheasants, and dead chuckers, totaling nearly 20 dead, I started to wonder why an animal would act that way. The mink just seemed to kill for the pleasure of killing. Why?
Then I thought of the evil in our world. There is no sense of it. Pornography or addiction, violence or stealing, murder and rape. There is no reason for it. It just comes into peoples lives and takes, for no other reason than taking.
The only thing standing between spiritual death by the evil that surrounds us is our shovel or weapon of choice(this morning it was a shovel), and willingness to wield it. Will we be caught unaware like the chickens, chuckers, and pheasants? Will we fight like the rooster? Will we run like the loan chicken? Will we chase it down like my fierce husband with his shovel?
When evil gets into the chicken coop, how can we react?
I am reminded of the scripture that encourages us to put on the whole armor of God. You can read the whole thing in Ephesians 6, starting in vs. 11.
I am going to paraphrase it.
Girt your loins with truth
A breastplate of righteousness
your feet shod with the gospel of peace
a shield of faith
a helmet of salvation
a sword of the spirit
If we can be armed with God, we will not fall to the evil that preys on those around us. We will certainly be talking about Gods armor in our family!
