Donovan's New Life
Children's Story
One of the interesting features about this story of the calling of the first disciples, is that they all immediately left everything to follow Jesus. It was as though they instinctively knew where they would find life with a capital L.
Donovan Duckling is instinctively tied to his mother's apron strings. When the time is right, will he have a strong enough desire to cut those ties?...
Donovan Duckling was swimming right at the end of the line, behind all his brothers and sisters. He was the last duckling to be born, and as the youngest always found himself right at the back.
When Donovan had emerged from his shell, the first face he had seen was his mother's, and he found himself following her everywhere. He couldn't help it. He was born with the instinct to follow the first moving thing he saw, which luckily happened to be his mother. It felt to Donovan as though he had been following his mother for days and days and days. At first, that had been really good, because the world had seemed like such a big and frightening place, but now he'd grown bigger and his yellow fluff was beginning to disappear in favour of proper duck down, and he was beginning to know his way around, Donovan was getting fed up.
The line of ducklings had already grown smaller, because some of his older brothers and sisters had simply swum away. At least, that's what Donovan hoped had happened. Occasionally he'd spotted really big fish, and once or twice a huge water rat, immediately before some of his brothers and sisters had disappeared, but he tried not to think about that.
As he swam around behind his mother, always following her and swimming with his remaining brothers and sisters, Donovan began to notice other little broods of ducklings. Some of them looked as though they were exactly the same age as he was, and Donovan started to quack in greeting as he passed them. Actually, he was still a bit too young to quack properly, so it came out as something of a chirrup, but the other ducklings always heard and responded, so Donovan began to make new friends.
Sometimes he tried to swim over to his new friends so that they could play together, but his mother, who seemed to have eyes in the back of her head as well as the front, always spotted him and quacked loudly. As soon as he heard his mother's quack, Donovan found himself swimming after her. Sometimes when he heard his mother quack, Donovan noticed the large fish and the huge water rats suddenly turn tail and swim in the opposite direction away from the line of ducklings, and he was vaguely aware that his mother was protecting him from danger. But the older he grew, the more irritating that became, for he felt that as a nearly-grown-up duckling it was time he was allowed to look after himself.
One day, when Donovan was swimming along in the line as usual, he noticed a group of his friends all together over the far side of the pond near the bank. But he gasped in amazement, for they looked so very different. They had all suddenly grown up, or so it seemed, for they were now proper ducks and drakes with beautifully coloured feathers, and they all looked as handsome as could be.
How Donovan longed to join them! But he knew he couldn't, for the instinct to follow his mother was so strong. Then one of his friends open his beak and quacked loudly. Donovan was astounded, for the sound that emerged was a real loud quack and no longer a little chirrup. Donovan felt the sound calling to him somewhere in the depths of his being. He didn't hesitate. He turned immediately and swam towards his friends - and to his delight he discovered it was easy!
When he got there, it felt as though this was the place that was right for him, the place he had to be. And when he looked at himself in the water, he discovered that he too had grown up and was now a handsome drake.
'When the time is right and you want it enough,' Donovan thought to himself, 'you can leave everything behind to go to the right place and to be with the right people. And that's the way it should be.'
And he swam happily away to begin the next phase of his life.
