Tool

I had just finished eating a chicken drumstick and despite my satisfaction, I was uncomfortable about something. You know how you feel when you have that last little fragment stuck in your teeth? Well, that was my dilemma. Of course, that reminds me of a funny story.

A man is driving forty miles per hour down a country road and suddenly a chicken runs past him.  He gets the car up to sixty miles per hour and passes the chicken.  Within a minute the chicken runs by him again.  He notices something strange.  It looks like the chicken has three legs.  He sees the chicken turn up a driveway, so he follows.  There is just a cloud of dust as he tracks behind the chicken.  He finally gets to a tumbling down farmhouse and an old farmer comes out on the porch. 

“What can I do for you young fella’?” says the farmer. 

“I can’t be sure but I thought I saw a three-legged chicken out on the road.” 

The farmer responds, “That’s right.  We raise them here.” 

The stranger asks, “Why do you do that?” 

The farmer tells his story,  “Well, you see Maa loves a chicken leg and I like a chicken leg.  Then Bill Jr. come along and he wants a chicken leg, too.  So, we started raising three-legged chickens.” 

The stranger asked, “Interesting.  What do they taste like?” 

The farmer sadly replied, “I don’t know.  We ain’t never caught one of them.”

But back to my point. I do believe the toothpick may have been the first tool invented.  That little piece of tree branch may have become a tool even before the first knife or fire were put to use.  It certainly was considered helpful before the bow and arrow and the wheel.

Sometimes, things get stuck in our mind the same way. They continue to bother us until we care for them. The ones that crop up in the middle of the night are the worst, aren’t they?  Sometimes they are a nuisance having to do with our day-to-day activities, but other times they’re from the Father to remind us about what should be done.  Action is the toothpick that solves our problem.