Squirreling

 It was a beautiful day to officially welcome Spring, here in the Northern Hemisphere.  

Ella and I went on a bike ride, the first of the season, and stopped at a bench where we watched this squirrel wrestle with his corn cob. 

We can learn a lot from squirrels.  Because they don't actually hibernate, they need food to eat all winter long.  Squirrels store up to 10,000 nuts by burying them in caches on the land surrounding their nests.  

A study at UC Berkeley found that squirrels actually hold each nut and sort them by type, nutritional value and more and bury them in scattered caches.

It has also been reported that they do fake burials where they actually put the nut in their cheek and pretend to bury them to throw off other squirrels who might try and pilfer their food.

Squirrels are then able to stay alive all winter by carefully going to their hiding spots and getting food to take back to the nest. 

We have also been told to prepare temporally and spiritually.  

In October 2020 General Conference, Elder Bednar stated, "Some Church members opine that emergency plans and supplies, food storage, and 72-hour kits must not be important anymore because the Brethren have not spoken recently and extensively about these and related topics in general conference. But repeated admonitions to prepare have been proclaimed by leaders of the Church for decades. The consistency of prophetic counsel over time creates a powerful concert of clarity and a warning volume far louder than solo performances can ever produce."

Bishop W. Christopher Waddell explained, "The Lord does not expect us to do more than we can do, but He does expect us to do what we can do, when we can do it. As President Nelson reminded us in our last general conference, “The Lord loves effort!"

It's a good time for me to reflect.  Do I feel secure in being able to provide for my family? What is one thing I could do or work on to get a bit closer to my goal?  

While we may not need to establish decoy caches (except for perhaps hiding the extra goodies in the rolled oats canister like my mom used to do), we do need to take prophetic counsel seriously.  

The squirrel can't just make a quick run to Costco and call it good.  Each nut is buried one at a time. 

Likewise, it is through the building of good habits repeated 10,000 times that piece by piece we will be able to secure our own temporal and spiritual preparedness.  I think I will go evaluate my "squirreling" habits.