The often-pictured mountain goat can thrive in elevations too high and cold for even trees to grow.
Its God-given not-by-accident design includes flexible inner pads in its hooves as well as a stocky body and thick fur to help insulate from the cold. So with its strength and agility, that goat has a perfect combination enabling him to run up a steep mountain incline and even leap ten feet across high chasms. The goat is obviously sure-footed and fearless in precarious locations where none of a goat's usual predators survive!
Goats around the world provide sustenance to persons who depend on them for their livelihood. Cattle normally can't live without grain but goats don't need grain to survive. It seems like a not-by-accident gift from the Creator to humans that goats can do well almost anywhere, simply grazing on whatever brush or grass they find.
Goats are delightful and often affectionate outdoor pets, if a person can contain or accommodate their tendency to consume indiscriminately a wide variety of items. Goats will sample almost anything once. But goats also can learn. Goat keepers refer to these animals as having "memory triggers" since adult goats have been observed determining by a quick taste or smell whether or not something is edible. If it is not, the wiser, mature goats don't make the same mistake twice. It's a not-by-accident programming from their Creator. A younger goat takes longer to learn needed lessons—just like the younger members of the human family!
Yeshua (in Matthew 25) illustrated a lesson about judgment time, when persons with selfish natures will be separated to the left—as goats are separated from sheep—while humans who minister to others were sent to the right, with blessings.
Is there something different about the nature of goats from other creatures? Here's one clue: Research has shown that goats revert back to a wild state faster than any other domesticated animal when left to themselves. The analogy is a loving alert to all who have chosen Messiah to also choose to stay close to Him! The new unselfish nature He gives by His Ruach (Spirit) will protect those who continually choose Him from their natural inclination to selfishness that would send the careless quickly back into a world dark with sin and separation from God.
The goat, oblivious to all this—doesn't have that freedom of choice. But we do!
"NOT BY ACCIDENT" (c) Juanita Kretschmar is used by permission and was first published in the book "Not By Accident 2" page 20 - 21
