Did you know a baby giraffe falls about six feet from its mother's womb at birth? In his book A View From the Zoo, Gary Richmond describes how a newborn giraffe learns its first lesson. The mother giraffe lowers her head long enough to take a quick look. Then she positions herself directly over her calf and swings one long leg outward and—kicks her baby, so that it is sent sprawling head over heels! When it doesn't get up, the violent process is repeated over and over again.

Finally, the calf stands for the first time on its wobbly legs. Then the mother giraffe does a remarkable thing. She kicks it off its feet again! Why? She wants it to remember how it got up. In the wild, baby giraffes must be able to get up quickly. Lions, hyenas and leopards all enjoy eating young giraffes, and they'd get to, if the mother didn't teach her calf to get up quickly and get with it.

How well do we get back up when life knocks us down? If God allowed us to go through our lives without any obstacles, it would cripple us. The apostle Peter described the value of trials: "In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while, if need be, you have been grieved by various trials, that the genuineness of your faith, being much more precious than gold that perishes, though it is tested by fire, may be found to praise, honor, and glory at the revelation of Jesus Christ" (1 Peter 1:6-7).