[The Lord] will cover you with his feathers, and under his wings you will find refuge.(Psalm 91:4, NIV)
“Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing."
(Luke 13:34, NIV)
My series on biblical birds ends this week with a profoundly beautiful image of divine love as a mother hen gathering her chicks under her wings, found in the Hebrew Scriptures and the New Testament. Tennessee-based Graphic Artist Lauren Wright Pittman offers us an unconventional icon of Jesus as a defiantly protective hen with her brood sheltered beneath her, crowned with a halo and colored in the sacred palette of red and blue. The picture summons up a hymn refrain from my Fundamentalist Christian childhood: "Under His wings, under His wings,/Who from His love can sever?/Under His wings my soul shall abide,/Safely abide forever." (John Kohan)