I’m not sure how the turkey thing started. Why someone turned to someone else and said, “You’re a real turkey.” As an epithet, it is tight and effective. It’s especially useful against a large group, as in “What a bunch of turkeys.” I hope you’ve never been seriously called one and I hope you haven’t used the term too much yourself. Turkeys have feelings too, you know.

Last week we had tornadoes touching down around here. My friend Jim Wideman had a few drop down in his city of Murfreesboro a half an hour away. During the storm, 5 wild turkeys came into our yard. 3 of them were big guys, and one was especially huge. I mean for a turkey, not meaning any offense. From far off, they looked dark brown, but up close they were a whole crayola box full of colors, cream, white, black, spotted, red, orange and all kinds of tans and browns. Beautiful and ugly and fierce and extremely cool. I hope you get to see a wild turkey up close someday.

So what’s the lesson here? Don’t call people names? Watch our for tornadoes and take cover when told to? God made amazing creatures? Things look different up close than they do far away? That it’s OK to call someone a turkey if they actually are one?

No. I just was thinking about those 5 birds. My only lesson for today is that Jesus loves you.