Chicken picking

The other day it rained.  So, I baked a chicken.
Its an easy meal that makes me feel domestic and the house smell homey on dreary stuck-inside kind of days.  Throw in a few root vegetables and you've got the major makings of a good supper.  It is so versatile and wholesome.  The older boys like to study the heart and other organs that come inside. (Love these prepackaged meals!)  The bones will get stuck in the freezer until I have enough to make a big batch of stock (in theory, at least.)  The leftover meat will feed us in at least one more main dish.  

That is, after I pick it clean.  Which I despise.

Now, I don't really have qualms about chicken blood and guts.  The idea of starting from scratch, taking the chicken from the barnyard to the table, doesn't particularly phase me (though I quickly admit I haven't had the opportunity to look a chicken in its beady eye while I hold it over a chopping block... That will be another blog post - someday.)  It's the after part I don't like.
I don't like the smell or feel of cold, slimy, greasy chicken.  I don't like throwing all the solidifying fat into the trash where it will stink by morning.  Mostly, I don't like the tedium of scraping off every last bit of meat.  I love to cook for my family, but by late evening, I don't want to be in the kitchen any more.  I want to be done.  I don't want to spend quality time with the carcass of a very dead bird.

This is where it gets ugly for a minute.  (If it wasn't already.)  During supper, I had been mumbling and grumbling a bit - just a bit - about this unpleasant task.  Someone who loves me very much offered to do it for me.  That isn't the ugly part, of course.  That is selfless love, and its beautiful.  He worked all day, came home and wrestled the little minions and played with the baby, then offered to de-meat the chicken after helping wrangle the kids through bath and bedtime.  Only thing was, after the boys were tucked in, I think he forgot.
I know; isn't that just despicable of him?

Ok, this really isn't about sins of omission.  Its not about him at all.  Its about me.  At least, I thought it was.  I was so mad.  How could he do this to me!   He knew how much I dislike this task.  He'd promised me.  But there he was in the living room, reading, leaving me to face the clean up in the kitchen.  Feminist sirens were blaring in my ears.  Did he think he'd get any of this for lunch tomorrow?  Why did I have to do all the work for everyone around here?  Those fellas want to act like pigs, I'll leave them with a pigsty.

There's a story in Luke 15 about a prodigal son.  He demanded his inheritance, wasted it, and ended up penniless, feeding swine to stay alive.  Verse 17 says he was sitting there in the muck with the animals when finally he came to himself.


Well, that's what I did.  Smacked right into my own rotten self, there at the kitchen counter with the slimy skeleton.  My dear Conscience whispered gently, "Would you pick this chicken for Me?"
I melted.
Of course I would.  I'd pick a hundred chickens for Jesus.


"Inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these My brethren, you did it to Me." Matthew 25:40

My husband is my favorite person in the world.  But I wouldn't pick a chicken for him?  I laughed, and sighed, dissolving in repentance.  That chicken meat went in the fridge, his lunch got packed, the bones went in the freezer, and he never knew what a shmuck I had been.  (Till now - I did ask him to proofread this for approval.)
But God knew my nasty little attitude.  He loved me too much to let a bunch of old bones get between us.  I love that He will find me in my messy little kitchen and suddenly bring me to the foot of His throne.  He is so good.