By Dr. Bọ́lá ADÉWARÁ
Most times, when the roosters in my compound, E-life Gardens, and those in neighbouring compounds begin to crow, I often pause in wonder. Why do they crow almost at the same moment, as though they were all obeying one invisible conductor? Why do they do so at such measured and regular intervals, as though responding to a heavenly timetable beyond human comprehension?
I remember my mother once telling me that in her village, back in the 1930s and 1940s, the crowing of roosters served as a reliable signal of time. In those days, people hardly depended on wristwatches or clocks. The crowing of cocks, the appearance of dawn, and the movement of the sun across the heavens were enough to guide human activities. Nature itself was a clock, because God had programmed order into creation.
Here in E-life Gardens, the roosters wake me daily with their piercing announcements of the approaching dawn. Last night, however, I became more deliberate in observing them.
When the first rooster crowed and woke me, I switched on the lamp beside my bed and checked the time. It was exactly 3:16 a.m.
The next time they crowed, I checked again. Then again. And again. 3:32 a.m., 3:46 a.m., 4:04 a.m., 4:14 a.m., 4:30 a.m. Their timing was astonishingly consistent.
What amazed me even more was this: these roosters do not usually crow aimlessly throughout the evening, at dusk, or deep into the night. It is as though they themselves retreat into rest, only to awaken with divine urgency in the sacred hours before dawn. At predawn, they suddenly come alive, sounding their mysterious trumpets into the sleeping earth.
Then I remembered what Mama told me while she was still alive: “Cocks do not crow frivolously. They crow at significant moments of time.”And I thought deeply about it. Who taught the rooster to measure the hours? Who instructed mere birds to align themselves so accurately with the rhythms of dawn? Who placed within creatures without watches such astonishing sensitivity to time and season?
Surely, there is a God whose sovereign intelligence governs the universe with precision beyond human understanding. The same God who commands the rising of the sun, the movements of the stars, the flowing of tides, and the changing of seasons, also whispers timing into the instincts of ordinary roosters.
Creation itself is full of silent sermons.
Truly, the works of God are unfathomable.
Àwọn iṣẹ́ Ọlọ́run, àwàmárìdì ni!
