GLASS OF WATER, OR LAKE?

"A gem cannot be polished without friction, nor a man perfected without trials." - Lucius Annaeus Seneca

Salt

In your puerility as an adult or as a child, have you ever put so closely to your eyes a very small object, only to discover how big it grew. So big it covered your entire view. Like holding up a pencil close to your eyes while closing the other eye. That's the power of focusing on only one thing. It magnifies it.

Once an unhappy young man visited an old sage to tell him how very sad his life was, and needed a solution. The old Master instructed the unhappy young man to put a handful of salt in a glass of water and then to drink it.

"How does it taste?" the Master asked.

"Terrible. Very salty." spat the young man.

He then asked the young man to take another handful of salt, to put in the lake. The two walked in silence to the nearby lake, after the young man poured his handful of salt into the lake. "Now drink from the lake." instructed the old man. As the water dripped down the young man’s chin, the old man asked, "How does it taste?"

"Good. Not bad." replied the young man.

"Do you taste the salt?" asked the old man.

"No." replied, the young man.

Sitting next to this troubled man, the old man said thoughtfully, "The pain of life is pure salt; no more, no less. The amount of pain in life remains the same, exactly the same. But the amount of the 'pain' we taste depends on the size of the glass we put it into. So when you are in pain, don't become a glass, become a lake."

Life, like we've already seen is a boxing ring. Punches surreptitiously swap at you, sometimes it gets so bad that, the only thing you seem to see is the fist coming at you. However, we should understand this morning that, the devastation you receive in life is proportional on how much concentration you give the taste, or the size of the fist hitting you. Life can get frustrating at times, but at such times don't look at how big the problem is but how big your God is, who is waiting to rescue you.