Charles Swindoll, in The Darkness and the Dawn, tells the story of how Old Ed every Friday strolled along the beach near where he lived in Florida on the way to his favorite pier. Clutched in his hand was a bucket of shrimp. As he walked to the end of the pier he always seemed alone with his thoughts. However, he wouldn’t be alone for very long. Up in the sky a thousand white dots would come screeching and squawking, winging their way toward Old Ed.
In almost no time at all the hungry seagulls would begin to envelop him, fluttering and flapping their wings wildly as he began tossing out shrimp to them. Anyone on the pier who happened to be in hearing distance of Old Ed could hear him say with a smile, “Thank you. Thank you.” It didn’t take long for the bucket to be empty, but Ed wouldn’t leave. He would stand there as if in deep thought, as though transported to another time and place.
Invariably, one of the seagulls would land on his sea-bleached weather-beaten hat – an old military hat Ed had been wearing for years. When he would finally leave the end of the pier, a few of the birds would hop along the pier with him until he got to the stairs that led down to the beach and toward his home. If you had happened to be on the pier with your fishing line in the water, you might have thought that Ed was an odd kind of codger – the kind who, as we sometime say, is “one sandwich short of a picnic.”
Just who was this fellow who fed seagulls each Friday a bucketful of shrimp? His name: Eddie Rickenbacker. If you are above eighty you will remember that he was a famous hero in World War II. On one of his flying missions across the Pacific, he and his seven-member crew went down in the ocean. Miraculously, all of the men survived, crawled out of their plane, and climbed into a life raft. They floated for days on the rough ocean. They fought the sun. They fought sharks. Most of all, they fought hunger. By the eighth day their rations ran out. No food. No water. They were hundreds of miles from land and no one knew where they were. They needed a miracle.
That afternoon they had a devotional service and prayed for a miracle. Then they tried to take a nap. Eddie leaned back and pulled his military cap down over his face. Time passed. All they could hear was the slap of the waves against the raft. Suddenly Eddie felt something land on the top of his cap. It was a seagull! With a flash of his hand and a squawk from the gull, he managed to grab it and wring its neck. He tore the feathers off, and he and his starving crew had a meal. They used the intestines for bait with which they caught fish, which gave them food and more bait. With that simple survival technique, they were able to endure the rigors of the sea until they were found and rescued.
Eddie Rickenbacker lived many years beyond that ordeal, but he never forgot the sacrifice of that first lifesaving seagull. Every Friday he would carry a bucket of shrimp to the end of the pier near his home. With his heart filled with gratitude and a smile on his face he would throw his shrimp to the seagulls while saying, “Thank you. Thank you.”
Some people go through life and never learn the importance of saying “Thank you” – to God for His many blessings, or to others who have touched their lives in a special way. In the middle of the Pacific Ocean Eddie Rickenbacker and his crew prayed for a miracle, and God heard their prayer. He learned that you should be grateful not only for what you receive, but also for what you escape. The sacrifice of one seagull paved the way for thousands of seagulls in Florida to have a sumptuous meal every Friday afternoon as the sun went down.
Miracles happen in the lives of those whose favorite attitude is gratitude.
The Paper Pulpit 
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