Today God gave me a pecan.
Not exactly the kind of thing most people would consider a special gift. Just a big old pecan lying on the sidewalk during my morning walk.
But when I looked down and saw it, something happened.
Suddenly, I was a little girl in the 1970s again, standing in my granddaddy’s backyard.
We used to pick up pecans there, and he taught us how to step on them just right to crack the shells without destroying the meat. I hadn’t thought about that in ages, but this morning when I saw a lone pecan on the sidewalk, I picked it up, stepped on it, and pulled out a piece to eat.
One little taste, and I was transported back to my childhood.
I’ve always been rather nostalgic. Old photographs, familiar songs, childhood memories. There’s something about remembering the people and places we loved that makes us wish, if only for a moment, we could go back.
I’ve even had a few time-traveling DeLorean fantasies!
Then today, for one brief moment, my fantasy became a reality.
And it came in the form of a pecan.
As I continued my walk, I started thinking about how many little gifts God gives us every single day that we never notice.
We look for the big blessings. The answered prayers. The unmistakable miracles. We recognize the gifts that come wrapped in beautiful packages with bows on top.
But what about the ones lying on the sidewalk?
What about the song that brings back a beautiful memory? The familiar smell that reminds us of someone we love? The unexpected moment that takes us back to a place we thought we could only visit in our dreams?
How many times do we walk right past those gifts because we’re too busy looking for something bigger?
That pecan wasn’t worth much. But what was inside it was priceless to me.
It held a few precious seconds in a place I hadn’t seen in decades.
And it reminded me that God’s gifts don’t always come the way we expect them to.
Sometimes they’re so ordinary that we nearly miss them altogether.
Today, God gave me a gift.
It was so much more than a pecan.
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