March 22, 2026

Ezekiel 37:1-14
John 11:1-45

The Manu-o-Ku chick was hungry. Of course he was hungry. Mom and Dad had fed him, then flown off to find more food. He sat on the branch where he’d hatched, and waited for them to come back.

He was hungry.

He got hungrier. The sun kept moving across the sky, but as it did no white wings appeared. He saw no black beaks carrying fish. There were plenty of other birds about, but not the ones he looked for.

He was hungry.

He was hungrier.

Where were they? They were clearly late. When you’re hungry, a late meal is the next one you have, because you want to eat when you’re just starting to be hungry, and not when you’ve been hungry for a while.

He’d been hungry for a while. At least so it seemed to him.

The sun really wasn’t moving that fast across the sky, but it was moving. He shuffled along the branch for a bit and that didn’t help. Now he was hungry in a slightly different place. It wasn’t really any different from being hungry in the place he’d been.

Where were his parents?

The ocean wasn’t that far away. He could hear the waves breaking sometimes. How far did you have to fly to find fish in the ocean? He didn’t know. He couldn’t fly yet.

What if they had to fly to a completely different island to find fish? That didn’t make sense, but sometimes when you’re hungry, you think things that don’t make sense.

Where were his parents? Did they get lost? Were they feeding some other chick? Had they decided that he was too much trouble?

No, he was sure they were coming back. If they could. If they hadn’t been blown off somewhere by a high wind…

He was so hungry.

He closed his eyes to focus on worrying and feeling sorry for himself and feeling hungry.

He opened his eyes a moment later to the sound of fluttering wings and the scrape of claws on bark. It was his mother. She had food for him. She was late – at least as far as he was concerned – but she was there.

But she didn’t have a fish for him.

She had two fish.

Not one, but two. She’d fished a bit longer to fill him up a little more.

He ate the first fish, and he felt less hungry. Then he ate the second fish, and he felt very good indeed.

“Thanks for being late, Mom,” he said. She gave him a funny look.

“Thank you for bringing two fish,” he said.

“Of course, son. You’re welcome,” she said, and she took off again for the next fish she’d bring back to him.

by Eric Anderson

Watch the Recorded Story

I write these stories in full ahead of time, but I tell them from memory and inspiration. The story as I wrote it and as I told it are not precisely the same.

Photo of a Manu-o-Ku parent delivering two fish to a chick by Eric Anderson.