You know who I’ve been seeing a lot of lately? Squirrels.

Running here and there, bright and perky, tails fluffed, arcing perfectly behind them as they leap through their day. 

Squirrels appear to be on top of the world, bounding across lawns and up trees. 

Judging by the spring in their step, we might think they have life all figured out. Turns out, they don’t. 

Did you know squirrels cannot find three out of every four acorns they hide? Three out of four! That means they’re 75 percent bad at their one job. 

Or take pigeons. With their rounded bodies and distinctive walk, pigeons have become a familiar sight all around the world, calling every continent except Antarctica home. 

Because they’ve achieved global spread, it’d be fair to assume they must be really amazing at doing bird things, like making nests.

False.        

For a delightful five-minute escape, look up pigeon nests and be amazed by their feeble attempts at home building. 

Three twigs on a welcome mat. A little hay stuffed into the handlebars of a motorcycle. Or simply a deck railing. They are astonishingly terrible nest makers!

And then there are the lovable pandas, who spend their days munching on bamboo shoots. They seem to be crushing their main task of eating. 

Pandas spend up to 16 hours a day consuming as much as one hundred pounds of bamboo. Champion eaters!

But do you want to know the crazy thing? They’re actually carnivores! They should be eating meat like other bears. Their digestive system can only absorb 20 percent of what they consume. 

That’s why they have to eat all day long and still have no energy. How have they not learned by now?

And yet, these animals endure. There are hundreds of millions of squirrels bounding around at any given moment, forgetting where they hid the vast majority of their fuel for winter. 

Hundreds of millions of pigeons are strutting through the streets or building a new house out of a couple of zip ties on the hood of a car. 

About 2,700 giant pandas are currently eating bamboo, 2,700 more than we’d expect given their nutrient-light diet.

What do these massive fails in the animal kingdom tell us? 

We shouldn’t worry about our weaknesses because the animals sure don’t! 

It’s OK if we’re crummy at our jobs despite our best efforts. God knows all about our weaknesses and will provide anyway. 

All He needs us to do is to keep trying. 

He may multiply our efforts, like when He used the boy’s five loaves and two fish to feed the multitudes. 

He may send us a Simon of Cyrene to help us shoulder a burden that is too heavy for us to carry alone. 

Or He may simply calm the storm so we can have a fresh start at accomplishing His will. 

Like the animals, let’s have bold confidence in the God on high Who is so much greater and more loving than we can possibly imagine. 

We can keep a spring in our step despite our many failings because we know He continues to take care of us no matter what comes our way. 

If God has preserved the forgetful squirrel, the untalented pigeon, and the sorely mistaken panda, He will do the same for us because we are worth more than many sparrows!