Dog Treasure

Our dog, Benelli, is spoiled badly! She eats organic food, goes shopping with us (allowed in most stores in Colorado) , she has full access to the furniture, and she sleeps in the bed with one of our boys and if he is not home she finds someone else’s bed. She is rarely alone. A couple of years ago I got her an all natural cow bone straight from the meat market. If I were a dog I would have loved it! This bone looked deliciously gross. I just knew she would be so excited to get it. Well, she was not, as a matter of fact it worried her a lot. You could see the worry on her face and hear it, loudly I might add, as she carried this huge gross thing around the back yard trying to decide what on earth to do with such a prize. Well she hid it and it was forgotten about. Last summer I saw the end of it sticking up in the rocks in our backyard, just the tip was showing. It looked like a decomposed.. well it was scary looking and I quickly realized what it was. She had never touched it again.
About a year ago she was out, and about three houses down the street. I called her and she came running all happy and excited with something really nasty looking in her mouth. I reluctantly took the wet, dirt covered thing. She followed me into the house to the sink and watched carefully while I washed up her treasure. By the looks of it, it had been buried a long time. It was a dog bone about the size of a baseball but not round. It was plane and small but it was truly hers. She found it, worked for it and then brought it home. Now I have bought her many bones and she has never acted like this over a bone especially the most delicious rather large one I had given her the year before. She was so very proud of herself and her treasure. She still has it and she never keeps up with anything! It has been part of her life about a year now. She will play with it, roll on it, knaw on it and bring it to any of us and lay it in our laps in an attempt to share it with us. We have all, at one time or another, held it for her while she knawed away.
I have been thinking about that bone and wondering what on earth is so special about it. Is it because she worked for it herself, no one handed it to her in an attempt to spoil her and make her happy. Was she so proud of it because it was awarded to her by her own abilities? I know there is a lesson in here somewhere and I am really hoping if I keep typing I will find one for us all to ponder. I also thought that maybe she is just a thief and enjoyed the heist from an unsuspecting dog! But I am trying here!
If a person is given things all their lives do they truly appreciate the whole aspect of it or do they appreciate things more if they work hard for them? Hmmm I know what the answer should be but I know I appreciate things either way. But do our children? If we give them everything and then they work for something, do they appreciate it more? I don’t really know. One would assume so.
I do know one thing for certain, James 1:17 Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.