The Conviction of Things Unseen

 

"Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for..."

(Hebrews 11:1)

We haven’t seen an egg since before Thanksgiving.  There are multiple reasons.  Trauma was a factor.  Throughout the weeks of August and September and into October, our happy little flock of 35 was steadily whittled down to 15 by the persistence of predators I proved helpless to forestall.  However devastating to me was the demise, to the sisters who watched the carnage and had every reason to expect it to include them, it was paralyzing.  They hadn’t recovered by the time molting season commenced - that annual period of feather shed prior to winter’s repluming.  Throughout the molt, inner resources are shifted from egg creation to feather fabrication.

And then winter, itself, descended.  It’s understandable to assume that hens simply find it too cold to lay eggs in winter, but in reality the constraint is light, not temperature.  Chickens require 12-15 hours of light per day to generate eggs, and in winter the sun is simply not that generous.  Through the solstice, darkness veils 16 of the available 24, incrementally yielding minutes thereafter.  It takes awhile.

The hens contend with all these biological and celestial constraints, while Dwayne the Barred Rock Johnson, our foster rooster has...let’s just say “other impediments”.  He'll not be laying any eggs.

As the new year has ventured deeper into January, however, I’ve been watching.  Searching.  Hoping.  But not finding.  They eat, they drink, they alternately scratch in the yard and huddle for warmth.  But they do not lay.

And then this morning, releasing the flock for another winter day, I glanced inside the nesting boxes where one hen lingered.  Slowly she rose and descended the ramp to join the others for a sip of water and a bite of food, leaving behind...

...the first green glimpse of spring.  An egg, still warm and as fresh and promising as the morning sun rising in the eastern sky.  The “assurance of things hoped for,” the foretaste of the feast to come.

Deep down, I suppose I knew that the nights of winter did not hold the final word - that spring would find us as surely as the dawn.  But like Noah’s dove returning with an olive branch testifying to the reemergence of dry land, the fresh egg is a joyful confirmation that hope is not in vain.  Spring is coming.  And who knows what other gifts of new life?  Perhaps it is too much to hope for that the winter of our political discourse will yield and warm to a more gestational climate; perhaps it is too much to suppose that we might awaken to the truth that our surroundings are our siblings rather than our plunder, or that our own flourishing is linked to our cooperation rather than our domination; that fertility, as nature teaches, depends on diversity rather than sameness.  

Perhaps.

But this morning, in the midst of January - against all odds - I found an egg.  

A blessed and delicious - and promising - foretaste, indeed.