Gifts From Above

Our preacher was giving a sermon in which he was making the point that often times we don't look UP to give God thanks for the many blessings we have in our lives.  He told the story about some hogs that he has in a pen under some oak trees.  He said he was watching them and as a fat acorn fell out of the tree, they would run over and gobble it up, never looking up to see where it came from.  Many times we're like that old hog.  When we are showered with blessings, we don't look up and thank God.

Today Tricia and I walked outside underneath the live oak trees.  There was a constant crunching under our feet from stepping on gazillions of acorns.

We don't have hogs, but we do have goats - four of them, to be precise.  The majority of the live oaks don't stretch above the pasture, so the goats don't have access to most of the acorns hitting the ground.

Tricia got a rake and a #10 can and filled it up several times, pouring hundreds of acorns over the fence.  The cows and goats came a running.  The cows sniffed around curiously, but they don't eat acorns.

The goats, however, were a different story.  They feasted.  All we saw is their lips moving rapidly and heard the crunching of hundreds of acorns being devoured.

Unfortunately, like the hogs in the preacher's sermon, the goats didn't look up and give thanks for the 'showers of blessing' in the form of acorns.