A Lesson from the Woodpeckers

 In addition to ants, squirrels and various other creatures who store food for the winter months, woodpeckers are busily collecting acorns here in Springville. There is a family of red-headed Acorn Woodpeckers working industriously around the oak trees which are growing on the easement next to our driveway.

            

 They have been picking up acorns and wedging them under the bark of gnarly old trees along the edge of the neighbor’s ditch and in cracks on our utility pole. Every so often we even catch one of the birds trying to drill holes in the wood siding on our house. I wonder if woodpeckers end up with head-aches at the end of the day, after all of that hammering with their long, pointed beaks!

             

The woodpeckers have one major obstacle to their goal of collecting and storing as many acorns as possible. Many of the old-style wooden telephone poles lining our country roads which served as wonderful “storage units” for the birds have been replaced by poles made of artificial materials. Having not been forewarned about the new poles, they are persistent in wanting to store their acorns in the same location as in previous years. Talk about headaches! Their futile drilling sends echoes up and down Globe Drive.

            There are a few places to drop acorns in the artificial telephone poles. But they rattle and clang all of the way to the bottom and are inaccessible to the woodpeckers. Maybe over the next century or two, the hollow poles will be completely filled up to the top with acorns! All of that work, with nothing to show for it. Now that’s sad!

             

We humans have trouble adapting to changes too. Sometimes we insist on clinging to old behavioral patterns when God is trying to lead us in new directions. May we be willing to accept changes graciously and submit to His will for our lives, Stubbornness only leads to “headaches,” whereas obeying God brings joy and freedom.

“The Serenity Prayer”

God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.

Living one day at a time;
Enjoying one moment at a time;
Accepting hardships as the pathway to peace;
Taking, as He did, this sinful world
as it is, not as I would have it;
Trusting that He will make all things right
if I surrender to His Will;
That I may be reasonably happy in this life
and supremely happy with Him
Forever in the next.
Amen.
 Reinhold Niebuhr (20^th century American theologian) taken from Wikipedia

(article published in the Porterville Recorder 10/19/13)