“On the third day of Christmas, my true love gave to me: three French hens, two turtledoves, and a partridge in a pear tree.” (“The Twelve Days Of Christmas”). In the following verses, the Savior compares Himself 3 times to a hen gathering her chicks under her wings. “O ye people of these great cities which have fallen, who are descendants of Jacob, yea, who are of the house of Israel, how oft have I gathered you as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and have nourished you. And again, how oft would I have gathered you as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, yea, O ye people of the house of Israel, who have fallen; yea, O ye people of the house of Israel, ye that dwell at Jerusalem, as ye that have fallen; yea, how oft would I have gathered you as a hen gathereth her chickens, and ye would not. O ye house of Israel whom I have spared, how oft will I gather you as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, if ye will repent and return unto me with full purpose of heart.” (3 Nephi 10:4-6). There are three different kinds of hens in these verses. The hen that has gathered, the hen that would have gathered, and the hen that will gather. Regardless of how strongly we believe or disbelieve in Christ or how much or how little we feel we qualify for the blessings and grace and mercy of His Atonement at this present moment, if we are being completely honest we would have to admit that there have been many times in our lives where we have been helped out of impossible situations by powers greater than our own. Remembering that the Savior has come to our aid and gathered us under His wing can fortify our faith and strengthen our resolve and perhaps humble us enough to feel gratitude for how merciful the Lord has been to us in the past. There are also many occasions where we can see that if only we had been a little less stubborn or foolish or self-destructive, then we might have turned to the Lord and allowed Him to shelter us in His arms, only we were too stubborn or too fearful to let Him help us. But no matter how much Christ has gathered us or how much He would have gathered us, if only we had let him, we still have this promise: Christ will gather us like a hen gathers her chicks under her wing as often as we will let Him. That is the beauty of Christ's infinite sacrifice - it reaches into the past and into the future and into every version of what might have been and it secures for us the best possible version of our lives both now and on into the eternities. As we celebrate Christ and His birth and His life and His Atonement, I hope that we will remember the three hens and all that has happened and might have happened and will happen thanks to the sacrifice and the grace and the mercy of Jesus Christ.
