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Parable of the Day: What Can We Learn from a Mountain Stream?


There was a young boy who was walking with his parents in the woods one day. He saw a clean brook. He drank some fresh water and then he took a stick and started mudding the water in the brook. The bottom of the brook was made of sand, so all this sand, fallen leaves, and other rubbish appeared on the surface. The water that had once been clean was no longer suitable for drinking. It was too boring to look at the muddy water, so the boy threw the stick into the brook and ran to his mother.

There was another boy up in the mountains who tried the same trick with a mountain stream. He wanted to muddy the water with a stick, too. However, the bottom of the stream was rocky, so he broke the stick and ran away without having achieved anything. The stream remained as clean as it had been before.

Similarly, some people appear to be kind and willing to help, like a pure stream. However, if you offend such a person, even unintentionally, you will see arrogance, petty pride, and old offences get to the surface of his soul, like mud and rubbish in a forest stream. On the contrary, when a person constantly educates himself in the Word of God and thinks about divine things, little by little the example of humility set by Jesus Christ makes this virtuous person humble and persevering, so that anger and hostility break like sticks when they meet the rock.


Translated by The Catalog of Good Deeds

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