I think God is trying to tell me something...

I readily admit I don't read the things that get forwarded to me via email. There's just too many cute kitty kat pictures and schmaltzy thoughts rolling around the internet for me to read them all. And I have a few people who send me oh, about 50 every week (please stop!). So I hit delete. Occasionally I read a couple of them from my mom, but that is mostly because she asks me if I liked it and I feel too guilty to lie or admit that I delete them. So I think God must use creative ways to communicate encouraging thoughts to me. 


This week at work I was helping an older woman eat her dinner. She was very slow in chewing her food. Very slow. So instead of getting her to talk as she ate I let her eat and had to occupy my thoughts elsewhere. A note on her tray caught my eye. It was the story told below.  It struck me as true and I thought about it especially in relation to the last couple of years of our life. Then this morning I opened one of those various forwarded emails from my mom. It had the same story. I am getting the message....




There was a man who had four sons.
He wanted his sons to learn not to judge things too quickly.
So he sent them each on a quest, in turn,
to go and look at a pear tree that was a great distance away.

The first son went in the winter,
the second in the spring,
the third in summer and
the youngest son in the fall.

When they had all gone and come back,
he called them together to describe
what they had seen.

The first son said that the tree was ugly,
bent, and twisted. The second son said
no it was covered with green buds and
full of promise.

The third son disagreed; he said it was laden with blossoms
that smelled so sweet and looked so beautiful,
it was the most graceful thing he had ever seen.

The last son disagreed with all of them; he said it was ripe and
drooping with fruit, full of life and fulfillment.

The man then explained to his sons
that they were all right, because they
had each seen, but only one season
in the tree's life.

He told them that you cannot judge a tree or a person
by only one season, and that the essence of who they are
and the pleasure, joy and love that come from that life
can only be measured at the end, when all the seasons are up.

If you give up when it's winter, you will miss
the promise of your spring, the beauty
of your summer, fulfillment of your fall.

Don't let the pain of one season destroy the joy of
all the rest. Don't judge life by one difficult season.
Persevere through the difficult patches and better
times are sure to come some time.