Pecking Metal

Tap tap tap tap.....taptaptap......TAPTAPTAP
Someone was getting faster and angrier in his taptapping. The dogs and I looked around as we walked, trying to find the source of the exasperated hammering. Then I saw the Downy Woodpecker, on a metal post, trying desperately to make a hole in the metal. His poor beak bounced off the reluctant surface repeatedly, so he would peck faster and more furiously, but to no avail. What was particularly ironic about this display was he had chosen a metal porch column when the yard was filled with lovely trees; trees made of wood not of metal. Unfortunately, I don't speak Woodpecker, and was unable to direct him to a more likely surface to bore for dinner.

Honestly, don't you think God would have programmed the bird to know the difference between wood and metal? His very essence, his name would indicate that he should be pecking WOOD, but there he was, oblivious to his calling, trying to be what he was never intended to be, a metalpecker.

The hard thing in life is to know when to persevere because we are on the cusp of victory, and when to recognize we are just pecking metal and we are never going to find the juicy grub we seek there. I think this is a very hard issue- this discernment to recognize when one more peck and we hit paydirt vs. fruitless beak blunting folly. Is it rejection number 301 from literary agents.... or should I have called it quits at rejection 20? We all know it is darkest before dawn and if we can just hang in there a few more minutes we will see the sunrise, we will feel the warmth melt away the terrors of the night.....But sometimes, are we woodpeckers trying to be metalpeckers? Whether to keep hammering on agents' doors is just a small example, and perhaps of little consequence. But there are more serious examples that come to my mind when I think of how hard we peck at impenetrable goals.

We are in good company. Paul of the Bible before he became a Jesus follower was a rabid Jesus hater and persecuter. He was on a rampage against the Christians, fighting God without even knowing it. And then one day, Jesus appears to him in a blinding light and asks him, "Why are you pecking at metal?"

Well that is what Jesus would have said if Paul were my woodpecker friend. Instead, He asked him, "Is it hard for you to kick against the goads?"
 Goad is not a word you hear all that often, so I looked it up to be sure I knew what Paul was kicking.
Goad:
–noun

1.a stick with a pointed or electrically charged end, for driving cattle, oxen, etc.; prod.

2.anything that pricks or wounds like such a stick.

In other words, what Paul was kicking was hurting him, wounding him, even maybe drawing life sustaining blood. You would think Paul would have had the sense to stop.... but it took being blinded for a few days by Jesus for him to finally recognize he was pecking metal. Blinded....so that he could see. Ironic, isn't it?

But I think the message is a comforting one. Sometimes we are so busily fighting the obvious or trying to be earnestly something we are not.... or finding all kinds of ways to dance around the God who is right in front of our face that we are harming ourselves. We miss the true source of sustenance, joy, and life itself. But God can stop us....He can redirect us if we are willing to pause long enough to hear Him.

As we walked on, we heard the taptaptap resume while the feast of wooden trees waved their limbs all around the woodpecker, beckoning.

Acts 26:13-15 (New International Version)

¹³About noon, O king, as I was on the road, I saw a light from heaven, brighter than the sun, blazing around me and my companions. ¹⁴We all fell to the ground, and I heard a voice saying to me in Aramaic, 'Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me? It is hard for you to kick against the goads.'
 ¹⁵"Then I asked, 'Who are you, Lord?'