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Years ago, my dad told me a humorous story about something that happened when he was a little boy growing up way out in the forests and red clay of rural Georgia.

His family was very poor. They lived far out in the country in a tiny log house, with no close neighbors around. They didn't have much, and what they did have mattered. A chicken wasn't just another animal wandering around the yard. A chicken meant eggs. It meant food on the table. And when you had very little, losing even one chicken was something worth worrying about.

But one day, one of their chickens disappeared.

They searched everywhere they could think of. They looked around the house and through the yard, but there was no chicken. There weren't even any feathers or other signs that a fox, owl, or some other animal had gotten it. The chicken had simply vanished.

Eventually, someone had an unusual thought. There was an old well nearby that had gone completely dry. Could the chicken somehow have fallen into the well?

The problem was that the well was deep and dark. Looking over the edge didn't tell them anything because they couldn't see the bottom.

Then someone found a piece of broken mirror.

They held the mirror in the sunlight and carefully angled it so that a beam of sunlight reflected down into the darkness of the well.

And there she was!

Far below them, at the bottom of that dry well, was their missing chicken—alive and wandering around, scratching at the dirt looking for something to eat.

Finding her solved one mystery, but it created another problem. How were they going to get her out?

They didn't have a rope long enough to lower someone into the well. They didn't have a ladder long enough to reach the bottom. Somehow they had to rescue a chicken that couldn't possibly understand what they were trying to do.

Then somebody came up with one of those ideas that sounds totally ridiculous, until it works.

They decided to go fishing.

For a chicken!

They got a fishing line with a hook on the end, put corn on the hook, and lowered it slowly into the well. The hungry chicken saw the corn and went after it. She took the bait—and they had her.

Carefully, they began pulling the fishing line back up. Little by little, that chicken came rising out of the darkness until she finally reached the top of the well and was safely back in the daylight.

I can only imagine the excitement. They had searched for a missing chicken, found her with a broken mirror, and then actually gone fishing for her.

And caught her!

I've thought about that story many times over the years. It's funny, of course. But recently I've begun to see something much more important in it.

That little chicken's predicament reminds me of our own. And the more I think about the details of her rescue, the more I see a picture of what God has done to rescue us.

Jesus said in John 10:10, in the New Living Translation:

“The thief’s purpose is to steal and kill and destroy. My purpose is to give them a rich and satisfying life.”

There are two very different purposes in those words. One is to destroy life. The other is to give life.

Satan wants to separate us from God, the Source of life. Jesus wants to bring us back into a loving relationship with His Father and give us the life we were created to enjoy.

And that brings us back to the chicken.

No one ever knew how that chicken ended up at the bottom of the well. But let's use our imaginations for a moment.

Imagine that chicken perched on the stones surrounding the well when she heard what sounded like another chicken somewhere below. She looked down but couldn't see anything. The well was too dark.

What she didn't understand was that she was hearing her own voice echoing back to her.

Maybe she became curious. What was down there? Were other chickens enjoying something she was missing?

We don't know whether anything like that happened. But suppose it did.

Doesn't that sound a little like what happened to Eve in the Garden of Eden?

God had placed Adam and Eve in a beautiful garden where everything they needed for a happy life was provided. They had food, companionship, meaningful work, and best of all, they enjoyed fellowship with their Creator.

There was no sickness, no suffering, and no death. They had every reason to trust the God who had given them such a wonderful home.

But Satan wanted to destroy their happiness, and he knew that the first thing he needed to do was undermine their trust in the One who worked so hard to give them happiness - God.

He couldn't force Eve to disobey, so he tried to convince her that God was keeping something good from her. He suggested that God's restriction concerning one tree wasn't really for her protection. Perhaps God didn't want her to have something that would make her life even better.

In Genesis 3:5, the serpent told Eve that if she ate the forbidden fruit, her eyes would be opened and she would become like God, knowing good and evil.

Think about what Satan was suggesting. Eve already lived in a perfect world, surrounded by evidence of God's love. Yet Satan persuaded her to question whether the One who had given her everything could really be trusted.

And here's something interesting.

After Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit, Genesis 3:7 says that their eyes were opened.

Satan had promised that much, and it actually happened.

But what did they see?

Instead of discovering a wonderful new life, they discovered shame, fear, and the terrible consequences of disobeying the God who loved them.

For the first time, they were afraid of their Creator. When God came looking for them in the garden, they hid.

Imagine that! The very One who had given them life, created their beautiful home, and provided everything they needed had suddenly become Someone they were afraid to meet.

What had changed?

God hadn't stopped loving them. He hadn't suddenly become cruel or unkind. But Adam and Eve had believed Satan's lies, and their understanding of God had changed.

The serpent had promised something better, but it was mixed with a lie.

And perhaps that little chicken had made a similar discovery. If she had been attracted by sounds coming from below, she may have imagined something wonderful was waiting for her. Instead, she found herself trapped at the bottom of a dark well.

Satan still tries to persuade people that life will be better if they stop trusting God. He makes sin attractive by drawing attention to what he promises while hiding what it will cost.

And one of the most damaging things his deception does is change the way people think about God.

If Satan can persuade us that God is withholding something good from us, we may begin to see God's loving warnings as unreasonable restrictions. We may even become afraid of the very One who is trying to protect us.

That's one of the reasons Jesus came into our world. He came to expose Satan's lies by showing us what God is really like.

Now let’s imagine that chicken down at the bottom of the well again.

She couldn't climb out. She couldn't explain what had happened to her. And she had no way of knowing whether anyone would ever find her.

But there was something she didn't know.

Someone was looking for her.

The family had noticed she was missing. They hadn't forgotten her or decided she wasn't worth the trouble.

That reminds me of a story Jesus told in Luke 15.

A shepherd had a hundred sheep, but one wandered away and became lost. He still had ninety-nine safely at home. He could have decided that losing one wasn't worth worrying about.

But that's not what he did.

Jesus said the shepherd went after the one that was lost until he found it.

Notice that the shepherd went looking.

The sheep didn't have to find its way home before the shepherd would care about it. The shepherd already cared.

And when he found the sheep, he didn't beat it for wandering away. He lifted it onto his shoulders and carried it home.

Jesus wanted people to understand something about God.

The Father doesn't stop loving His children when they wander away. He comes looking for them.

And that's exactly what happened after Adam and Eve sinned.

Remember how they hid from God?

Genesis 3:9 tells us that God called to Adam and asked, “Where are you?”

God knew where Adam was. But Adam needed to know that God was still looking for him.

Even after Adam and Eve had disobeyed, even after they had believed Satan's lies, God came looking for His lost children.

And He has been seeking His lost children ever since.

There's one important difference between the chicken and us, though.

That chicken was valuable to the family because she helped provide food. But God doesn't value us because of what we can produce for Him.

He values us because we are His children.

And He loved us long before we ever thought about looking for Him.

Think about that broken mirror the kids used.

Without it, they couldn't see what was at the bottom of the well. The darkness concealed the chicken from their view.

But someone found a piece of broken mirror, turned it toward the sunlight, and reflected the light down into the darkness.

Suddenly, what had been hidden became visible.

I love that picture.

Jesus said in John 8:12:

“I am the light of the world. If you follow me, you won’t have to walk in darkness, because you will have the light that leads to life.”

Jesus came into a world darkened by sin and deception.

People had been taught all sorts of things about God. Some believed He was quick to become angry. Others thought He was more interested in punishing sinners than saving them.

Many had come to believe that if they could only obey enough rules or somehow make themselves good enough, perhaps God would finally accept them.

But when Jesus came people began to see God in a way they had never seen Him before.

They watched Jesus touch people whom everyone else avoided. They saw Him eat with people whom religious leaders considered unworthy. They watched Him forgive sinners, heal the sick, feed the hungry, and welcome little children.

And perhaps for the first time in their lives, some of those people began to wonder whether God might actually love them.

Think about the leper who came to Jesus in Matthew 8.

The man believed Jesus had the power to heal him, but he wasn't sure Jesus would want to.

He said, “Lord, if you are willing, you can heal me and make me clean.”

And what did Jesus do?

He reached out and touched him. Then He said, “I am willing. Be healed!”

Can you imagine what that touch meant to a man who had probably gone a long time without anyone willingly touching him?

Jesus didn't merely demonstrate His power. He demonstrated His compassion.

And think about Zacchaeus.

Here was a dishonest tax collector whom almost everyone despised. But Jesus stopped beneath the tree where Zacchaeus was sitting and told him that He wanted to visit his home.

Jesus treated Zacchaeus as someone worth loving, and that kindness helped change his life.

In both encounters, people were discovering something about God. They were seeing His character in action.

Jesus said in John 14:9:

“Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father!”

Think carefully about those words.

The compassion people saw in Jesus was the compassion of the Father. The tenderness, the patience, the willingness to forgive—all of it revealed God's heart.

Jesus wasn't trying to persuade an unwilling Father to love us.

The Father already loved us.

John 3:16 says that God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son.

Jesus came because the Father loved us, and Jesus loved us too.

Father and Son were working together for our rescue.

Let's return to that mirror again for a moment.

The mirror didn't produce any light of its own. It simply reflected the light that was already shining.

And it was broken.

Yet even broken, it could still reflect the sunlight.

Isn't that a beautiful picture of what God can do through us?

We aren't the Light. Jesus is.

But as we come to know Him, as we learn to trust Him and appreciate His character, we can reflect His love into the lives of people around us.

We don't have to be perfect before God can use us. Even people who have been hurt, disappointed, and broken by life can help someone else see what Jesus is like.

The important thing is that we are turned toward the Light.

Now we come to one of the strangest parts of my dad's story.

How do you rescue a chicken from the bottom of a deep well when you don't have a rope or ladder long enough to reach her?

You go fishing.

But why did the children use corn?

Because they understood something about chickens. A hungry chicken is interested in food, and corn was something she recognized.

The children couldn't explain their intentions to her. They couldn't tell her that they wanted to rescue her, or that remaining at the bottom of the well would eventually mean her death.

So they used something she understood.

Corn.

And it worked.

But when God looked down upon His lost children, He did something far more wonderful.

He didn't lower a hook from heaven and try to pull us out against our will.

He came Himself.

Jesus entered our world and lived among us. He ate with people, listened to their troubles, healed their diseases, held their children, and showed them a kind of love many had never experienced before.

He didn't demand that people trust Him without giving them a reason. He showed them what He was like.

And because Jesus came to reveal the Father, everything people saw in Him was helping them understand what God Himself is like.

There is something very important about the difference between that fishhook and the way Jesus rescues us.

The children couldn't explain their plan to the chicken. They couldn't reason with her or ask her to cooperate.

And I suspect that being pulled out of a well by a fishhook wasn't particularly comfortable. But the children weren't trying to hurt her. They were trying to save her life.

God's method of rescuing us is different.

He created us with the ability to think, to reason, and to make choices. He knew we could recognize His love if we were given the opportunity to see it for ourselves.

So Jesus came to give us the clearest possible evidence of that love.

And nowhere was that love demonstrated more clearly than at the Cross.

Jesus said in John 12:32:

“And when I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw everyone to myself.”

The next verse explains that He was speaking about the kind of death He would die.

Think about what happened at the Cross.

The very people Jesus came to rescue rejected Him. They mocked Him, beat Him, placed a crown of thorns upon His head, and nailed Him to a cross.

Satan wanted Jesus destroyed. He wanted the Son of God to abandon His mission or respond to cruelty with cruelty.

But Jesus refused.

Even while He was being crucified, He prayed for those responsible for His suffering.

“Father, forgive them, for they don’t know what they are doing.” That's Luke 23:34.

What kind of love is that?

Jesus wasn't dying for people who had already become good enough to deserve His sacrifice.

Romans 5:8 tells us that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

He actually died for His enemys.

And He did it willingly.

At the Cross, Jesus showed just how far He and His Father were willing to go to rescue us.

He was willing to give His own life rather than abandon the people He had come to save.

Satan wanted the Cross to be the end of Jesus. But God turned that terrible event into the means of our salvation.

Let’s go back to that chicken again.

Suppose that chicken had somehow survived at the bottom of the well long enough to have chicks.

Those little chicks would have been born in darkness. They wouldn't know what green grass looked like or what it felt like to run around in the sunshine.

They wouldn't know what they were missing.

And perhaps that's a little like us.

We were born into a world already damaged by sin. We've never experienced the perfect world God originally created.

We've grown up where people get sick, grow old, suffer, and die. We've lived with these things so long that we think of them as normal.

But none of that was part of God's original plan.

Jesus knows what life was supposed to be like because He is the One who created this world in the first place.

John 1:3 tells us that all things were made through Him.

Jesus knows what sin has taken from us. And He came to restore what has been lost.

Jesus didn't come merely to make life at the bottom of the well a little more comfortable.

He came to rescue us.

He wants us to experience abundant life now, through a loving relationship with Him and His Father. And He has promised something even greater.

He said He is coming back. In John 14:3 He said,

“And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also.”

Revelation 21:4 promises that God will wipe away every tear and that there will be no more death, sorrow, crying, or pain.

I began by telling you a funny story about a chicken that somehow ended up at the bottom of a dry well.

No one knows how she got there, or knows whether that poor chicken ever understood what had happened to her.

But I know one thing.

Someone cared enough to look for her. Someone found a way to shine light into her darkness. And someone found a way to bring her home.

That reminds me of the God Jesus came to reveal.

Satan wants us to believe that God cannot be trusted.

Jesus came to show us that the Father loves us more than we can possibly imagine. And He didn't simply tell us about that love. He demonstrated it.

The children used corn and a hook because the chicken couldn't understand what they were trying to do. They couldn't explain their intentions or help her understand that they were trying to save her life.

But God created us with the ability to think, to reason, and to make choices. He knew that we could understand His love if we were given the opportunity to see it for ourselves.

So Jesus came in person.

Through the way He lived, the people He loved, and ultimately His willingness to die for us, He demonstrated what God is really like.

Jesus gave us the evidence we needed to recognize the Father's love, understand His intentions, and decide for ourselves whether He could be trusted.

And when we begin to see God as He really is, something wonderful happens.

We begin to love the God we once feared. We begin to trust the One we once misunderstood.

Jesus is still inviting us today to follow Him, and I can't think of anyone I would rather follow.

Think what our Bible verse means in light of what we just learned.