A few days ago, I heard on my car radio a story given by Pastor Skip Heitzig which brought joy to my heart. Here it is from my memory, so forgive me if I botch it...
The door opened and "Old Eddie" came out, carrying a bucket, that seemed heavy for Old Eddie. He shuffled down the street and turned to walk on the ocean pier.
When he reached the end of the pier, he set down his bucket, bowed his head, and prayed. The bucket smelled because it was about 1/2 full of shrimp. If you looked closely at Old Eddie, his lips moved slightly, and he seemed to repeating one phrase only, thank you.
On or over this pier, like most piers, birds watched and waited. Soon, a single seagull appeared, then another, then more, until the end of the pier had dozens of seagulls all clamoring to reach the bucket. And of course, they were squawking like mad.
At this point, I must interject a thought of mine, that occurred when I pictured the flock of birds yammering. A movie I had seen years before, I think the title was "Finding Nemo" had a scene where seagulls were screaming "mine, mine, mine." As the birds were all striving for the shrimp, they were all shouting "mine, mine, mine" in my minds eye. Anyway, back to the story.
Old Eddie's last name was Rickenbacker, and he had been a WWI ace, but became famous again as a non-military observer during WWII.. His plane, searching for an island, could not find it, no GPS in those days, and ran out of fuel. The B-17 crash landed on the water, and the crew escaped into life rafts. They ate the food, and caught all the rain water they could, but as the days passed, they ran out of food. But still no rescue. Their food supply ran out after about thee days, and there were eight survivors, many injured on the raft.
After about a week, a bird, possibly a tern, landed on Eddie's head. The bird looked at Eddie and thought "he looks bad" but Eddie looked at the bird and thought "he looks like lunch." Eddie caught the bird, and the bird became both lunch and bait for more food. But they remained adrift for more than two more weeks. Eddie lost about 40 lbs.
Finally, they were rescued. And so Old Eddie fed the birds about once a week with a top flight meal, as he listened to God, speaking through birds, "Mine, Mine, Mine" and answered in prayer, thank you, thank you, thank you.