There are two stories I remember hearing while I was
a child that I must admit influence the way I listen to anyone who steps
forward to announce some momentous event. One of those stories was about the
boy who cried, “wolf!” The other was the story of “Chicken Little.”
The first story was about a boy who was not happy
with the job he had guarding the sheep. The work was not that hard, but he got
bored with the long hours and wondered whether anyone appreciated the job he
was doing. To break up the monotony he raises the alarm and is delighted when
the people from the village rush out help him protect the sheep from harm.
Discovering there is no threat, they return to their work in the village.
After a similar sequence of events occurs several
more times—with diminishing fervor from the townspeople on each occasion; a
wolf does actually attack the flock. When the boy raises the alarm this time,
people pause, look up from what they are doing, shake their heads, and then go
back to their work. The flock (and in some versions, the boy) is lost.
In some ways Chicken Little is more successful in
raising the alarm. She is struck on the head by an acorn as she is pecking
around the farmyard, and mistakenly concludes that the sky is falling. As she
goes from one resident of the farm to the next, she is quite convincing. With
each voice adding to the alarm, the anxiety becomes even more palpable, and
leads the whole crew to fail to see the very real danger of following “Foxy
Loxy” into his den (from which they never return).
When a voice breaks through the noise today, I have
to admit that I filter what they say through a skepticism that had its genesis
in these stories from my youth. But I also face a more personal challenge when
I am the one who is charged with raising the alarm: How do I call the community
of faith to take seriously the challenge “to prepare the way of the Lord”?
He has come and
he is coming again. “And this is my prayer, that your love may overflow more
and more with knowledge and full insight to help you to determine what is best,
so that in the day of Christ you may be pure and blameless, having produced the
harvest of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ for the glory and
praise of God” (Philippians 1:9-11).
