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
