Growing Apples

One day I stopped to think about growing apples. I was munching a delicious, juicy apple and took a big bite. As a result I got an apple seed into my mouth. I spat it out into my hand, with the intention of throwing it away. But instead I looked at the apple seed. Really looked. It was very dark brown, almost black. Its shape reminded me of a candle flame. A little dark brown candle flame…

I realized I was holding an apple tree in the palm of my hand. A little seed with the potential to become a beautiful big tree - a tree that could grow thousands of apples in its lifetime. Thousands of apples, each containing several seeds, each capable of growing a new tree which again could produce thousands of apples. 

Why then the world wasn't filled with apple trees?

It is a rule of nature that only a few of these seeds grow. Most never do or are destroyed early on in their growth.

And it came to my mind it's quite often so with people's dreams also. Wonderful ideas come to our minds but they die too soon - we don't tend to the little saplings, we don't protect them as we should. And then one day we wonder what happened to our dreams - why did they never come true?

I put the apple seed on the table, and bent down to see how the light was reflected from it, this nature's tiny wonder. I wondered when someone was seriously growing apples, how many times they had to try to get a seed to germinate? How much work did it require?

Maybe it was like with our dreams: the seeds of your dreams did not automatically grow. Like planting an apple tree It might take many trys: like a hundred job applications to get that good job. You might send your manuscript out two hundred times before it was accepted. You might meet dozens of people until you met the true friend.

But if you kept on sowing the seeds of your dream, one day you would succeed. And after that others would comment you were lucky to be successful - when in fact you probably failed more often than you would like to count. But you were good at failing - you learned, you adapted, and then with your new knowlegde you tried again. And again. And again. And one day success was yours.

I picked up the apple seed again - but instead of throwing it away I took an empty flower pot, poured some earth into it and planted the seed. Maybe one day it would grown into a proud tree. I'd never knew if I didn't try.

Clay Balls

 

 
A man was exploring caves by the Seashore. In one of the caves, he found a canvas bag with a bunch of hardened clay balls. It was like someone had rolled clay balls and left them out in the sun to bake.

They didn't look like much, but they intrigued the man, so he took the bag out of the cave with him. As he strolled along the beach, he would throw the clay balls one at a time out into the ocean as far as he could.

He thought little about it, until he dropped one of the clay balls and it cracked open on a rock. Inside was a beautiful, precious stone!

Excited, the man started breaking open the remaining clay balls. Each contained a similar treasure. He found thousands of dollars worth of jewels in the 20 or so clay balls he had left.

Then it struck him. He had been on the beach a long time. He had thrown maybe 50 or 60 of the clay balls, with their hidden treasure, into the ocean waves. Instead of thousands of dollars in treasure, he could have taken home tens of thousands but he had just thrown it away!

It's like that with people. We look at someone, maybe even ourselves, and we see the external clay vessel. It doesn't look like much from the outside. It isn't always beautiful or sparkling, so we discount it.

We see that person as less important than someone more beautiful or stylish or well known or wealthy. But we have not taken the time to find the treasure hidden inside that person.

There is a treasure in each and every one of us. If we take the time to get to know that person, and if we ask God to show us that person the way He sees them, then the clay begins to peel away and the brilliant gem begins to shine forth

May we not come to the end of our lives and find out that we have thrown away a fortune in friendships because the gems were hidden in bits of clay. May we see the people in our world as God sees them. 

Moral:" There's a drop of greatness in everyone. It's what you do with your drop that matters. It could be an ocean, a pond or a puddle that eventually dries up."

Good And Evil.........

  

Every morning a woman baked Chapati, an Indian flatbread, for members of her family and an extra one for a hungry passerby. She would always place the extra Chapati on the windowsill, for whosoever needed to eat it.

She noticed a hunchback came every day and took the extra Chapati. Instead of expressing gratitude, he would muttered the following words as he went on his way: "The evil you do remains with you. The good you do, comes back to you!"

This went on day after day after day. The woman felt very irritated. "Not a word of gratitude," she said to herself. "Every day this hunchback utters this jingle! What does he mean? "

One day, exasperated, she decided to do away with him. "I shall get rid of this hunchback," she said.

And what did she do? She added poison to the Chapati she prepared for him!

As she was about to place it on the windowsill, her hands trembled. "What is this I am doing?" she said. Immediately, she threw his Chapati into the fire, prepared another one and put it on the sill.

As usual, the hunchback came, picked up the Chapati and muttered the words: "The evil you do, remains with you. The good you do, comes back to you!"

The hunchback proceeded on his way, blissfully unaware of the war raging in the mind of the woman.

Every day, as the woman placed the Chapati on the windowsill, she offered a prayer for her son who had gone to a distant place to seek his fortune. For many months she had no news of him and she always prayed for his safe return.

That evening, there was a knock on the door. As she opened it, she was surprised to find her son standing in the doorway. He had grown thin and lean. His garments were tattered and torn. He was hungry, starved and weak.

Looking at his mother he said, "Mom, it's a miracle I'm here. While I was but a mile away, I was so famished that I collapsed. I would have died, but just then an old hunchback passed by. I begged him for a morsel of food and he was kind enough to give me a whole Chapati."

"When he gave it to me, he said, 'This is what I eat every day. Today, I shall give it to you, for your need is greater than mine!'"

As the mother heard those words, her face turned pale. She leaned against the door for support. She remembered the poisoned Chapati that she had made that morning. Had she not burnt it in the fire, it would have been eaten by her own son and he would have lost his life!

It was then that she realized the significance of the words: "The evil you do remains with you. The good you do, comes back to you!"

Moral of the story: Do good and don't ever stop doing good, even if it's not appreciated at that time.