Apparently not doing very much

Eona Bell

Christ in the Wilderness - The Hen | Stanley Spencer

This painting is one of a series which Stanley Spencer made to explore the time which Jesus spent in the wilderness. He planned forty images, one for each day of Lent, but only eight were completed.  The Gospels tell us very little about what Jesus did in that time, and Spencer’s pictures imaginatively fill some of that gap, with scenes which depict Christ’s encounter with creatures living in the desert – foxes, eagles and these hens – which symbolically point to his future ministry and teaching.

I struggle with the idea of deliberately ‘going into the desert’ to come close to God. The thoughts which can flood in when I remove myself from distractions may be terrifying and painful. Why would I want to lay myself open to hurt and acute awareness of my own failures?  Why not protect myself instead with a comfortable padding of busyness and feel safe doing ‘good works’ for the Lord?

Certainly, I can recall times in ‘desert places’ when God has blessed me not with temptation or challenge but with a profound sense of peace and awareness of his eternal goodness. I think of moments of utter stillness, often experienced during holidays which have left me with memories of sights and sounds to which I can return in my imagination when I need refreshment.

On the other hand, I rebel mentally against the notion that only by leaving the duties and business of ordinary life can I truly meet God and discover who he wants me to be. If God is in all things, is he not in the mess and banality of my family life, and in the daily struggles of many millions of people in the world who must work without respite for their basic survival?

That is why I like Spencer’s image of Christ, the hen and her chicks.  There she sits, apparently doing not very much but actually hard at work minding her babies, stretching out her neck to see what they are doing, a calm but watchful and secure presence as they scratch and peck and nestle in her feathers, doing their important work of feeding and growing to maturity. Her world has shrunk to the short distance the chicks can waddle, while in the meantime the cockerel struts off to another world, beyond the dunes, which she can only imagine. She mustn’t let her mind stray to bigger, deeper thoughts, because the minutiae of her chicks’ lives demand all her attention.

And Jesus sees this. There is Christ, watching the chicks with the mother hen, and watching over her too, sheltering them all in his massive, all-embracing, living form.  What love there is in his eyes as he gazes at them, and it almost seems he expects nothing more of them than that they simply be as they are. There is more, though, because the little bird flying in towards the hen is not her chick but a brown sparrow. Gently, by his example, Christ invites mother hen to welcome this stranger, expand her brood and share in his work of love, simply by being who she was made to be.