As a small boy I lived on a farm in Arbon Valley. We had chickens, which pretty much foraged on their own and provided us with eggs and entertainment. Now you've all heard the Lord's description sometimes regarding the various groups of his children who He equates with chickens and His difficulty to gather any one of them into a group and keep them on the right path. As soon as you gather them, they scatter. All of this was true from my vantage point as a little boy on the farm. Now it just so happened that one of the duties we had as children was to watch out for the chickens and to gather eggs that were sometimes left outside of the nesting area. As we did this there were a few lost chickens from time to time as a result from them becoming separated from their mothers. When this occurred we were to take the little chick and place it in a box that was provided on our front porch where we could feed the young chick until it could be reunited with its mother or mature enough to take care of itself. Well… I and my sister LeeAnn, who is two years younger than I, enjoyed our assignment. On one occasion we decided if one little chick was good, it would be a lot more fun if we had a lot a little chickens. So rather than just wait for the odd lost chick, we decided to chase the chickens through the weeds and vastly improve the number of available lost chicks. As we brought these little chickens and placed them in the recovery box, I'm sure mother began to notice a strange inflation of the number of lost chicks. Her reaction, rather than being unkind, was to enjoy the eager playfulness of two little kids. I'm sure it took her a substantial amount of time to return all those kidnapped chicks to their rightful homes, but I learned, as I grew older, what it means to be kind from my mother.