Toussaint enjoys raising chickens, so we have a large number of them. I probably wouldn’t realize if one was missing or a new one had arrived, but he knows them all. So when our neighbor came over to ask if her missing rooster had joined our flock, he could tell her right away that it hadn’t. She insisted, even indicating the spot where the rooster had supposedly crossed the wall of our property. So Toussaint whistled and gathered the flock so she could have a look and identify her rooster. Sure enough, she couldn’t find it. But Toussaint could tell that she wasn’t convinced and probably thought we had hidden the rooster somewhere. She came back the next day, still searching and insisting that she had heard the rooster crowing on our side of the wall. Although Toussaint felt anger boiling up inside, he managed to remain calm. We have had trouble with these neighbors before when they threw their garbage over the wall, and when our roof was damaged when a truck delivering stuff to them didn’t make it around the curve. Toussaint was irritated by the false accusation. Someone might very well have stolen the rooster. There are a lot of thieves around. In that case the truth would never be revealed. But there was nothing we could do about that. We left the situation in God’s hands.

A few days later, the neighbor lady called over the wall to Toussaint. Her husband had gone to the neighbor on the other side to draw water from the well, and he realized that the water had a rotten smell. He got a flashlight to inspect the well. You guessed it—their rooster had fallen in and drowned.

“The Lord will fight for you, and you shall hold your peace” (Ex. 14:14).

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