When the first baby laughed for the first time, its laughter split into a hundred thousand pieces and scattered to the four corners of the earth. This is how legends were born.
Here is a popular legend from the Orient.
Once upon a time, a tramp was happily returning home, carrying on his shoulder a sack of wheat which he has just been given. He would grind it and make enough bread to last for a week, or even more. This was his lucky day.
Looking up, he suddenly noticed the King’s carriage coming his way. He was in awe when the carriage stopped abruptly, right beside him! His imagination started racing… “The king is generous, he will surely give me money, a huge sum! My poverty is over! No more worries. No more apprehensions where my next meal will come from. My pitiful state is over!”
His hopes soared even higher, when he saw the king, dressed lavishly, stepping out of the carriage and approaching him … a poor, shabbily dressed beggar.
The king looked at him in his eyes. The tramp expected a gift from the king. But the king’s hands were empty. He opened his mouth and asked the beggar, “What can you give me?”
The beggar was confused. Bewildered. The king asking a grant from him, a pauper. He felt flustered. Slowly, unwillingly he opened his sack and gave to the king one grain of wheat. The king looked at it, smiled and climbed back into the carriage, which immediately disappeared in a cloud of dust.
Wondering what was the meaning of all this, the beggar went home. He felt so disappointed and cheated. He opened the bag on to his table to start preparing his bread… when to his surprise, he found amid the corn a beautiful grain of shining, pure gold!
He was shocked. He felt like weeping. He realized his stupidity. He had lost the chance to make a windfall!
“If I had given it all away to him, I would today be a rich man forever.”
Just a legend.
In Christianity this fairy tale becomes factual. The Master said it. He gives a hundred per cent (100%) interest. I tried Him and found out that it is true!
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Saint Teresa used to tell to her nuns: “No one can outdo God in generosity!
The story is told that one day a beggar by the roadside asked for alms from Alexander the Great as he passed by. The man was poor and wretched and had no claim upon the ruler, no right even to lift a solicitous hand. Yet the Emperor threw him several gold coins. A courtier was astonished at his generosity and commented, “Sir, copper coins would adequately meet a beggar’s need. Why give him gold?” Alexander responded in royal fashion, “Copper coins would suit the beggar’s need, but gold coins suit Alexander’s giving.”
A simple cue of the way our God treats us!