December 22, 1999
DOWN HOME:
Ben the Rooster: A fine,
fowl symbol of Christmas
___Someone said roosters are the symbol of Advent --the four-week period leading up to Christmas.
___You can make a pretty good case for placing angels on your short list of Christmas symbols. Same goes for the star, shepherds, a manger, halos and, of course, a newborn Baby.
___But roosters? Roosters are cocky, proud and stubborn. Noisy, too. And sometimes downright mean. Roosters hardly conjure up the warm image a normal Christian associates with Christmas.
___Nevertheless, roosters are symbols of Christmas. Every morning, they crow theirmighty cock-a-doodle-doos to announce the first rays of the sun. And, symbolically at least, they trumpet the coming of God's Son.
MARV KNOX
Editor
___So, I hope they're like a rooster I once knew. His name, I think, was Ben.
___Ben's owner was a quiet little boy named John Mark, my first grade classmate. John Mark lived next door to the Baptist church, and Ben was an outdoor rooster, free to roam the yard.
___We were sitting in prayer meeting one Wednesday evening. Seems like we were talking about the sick and the afflicted, which was our custom after singing a few hymns.
___Somebody failed to shut the back door. Who knows how long Ben had been curious about the hymn-singing. When he got a bird's-eye view of that back door, he strutted in to check things out.
___Nobody remembers who saw Ben first, but John Mark's mother was aghast and dispatched her son to grab that rooster.
___John Mark was quick, but Ben was quicker. Soon, Ben was squawking and hopping all over the place, while John Mark scampered and crawled under the pews. That little church shook with uproarious laughter long before the tiny boy caught his church-going pet.
___That's not the scene the Christmas Symbol Committee had in mind when it decided roosters can represent Christmas on certain occasions. but Ben's trip to prayer meeting reminds me of how God Almighty came to Earth as a Holy Baby: Unexpectedly. Excitedly (which also is where the angels come in). Joyfully.
___You know, I don't remember much about all the other Wednesday evenings we spent in that little-bitty Baptist church.
___But I'll never forget the night Ben the Rooster came to church. How we laughed as we prayed. And how we felt God's vibrant, uplifting presence in our mirth.
___A nice Christmas symbol: The unexpected arrival of a rooster changed our little church that evening. Jesus arrived and changed the world for an eternity.
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