Remembering, retelling
and contextualized an old story by Aesop, a Greek story teller, with new
insights in my mind: It was hot weather in Malaysia. A grasshopper was hoping
around, enjoying the heat and singing with joy. The grasshopper didn’t feel he
had a care in the world, and he was enjoying the moment.
An ant passed by
the grasshopper carrying a large piece of nut he was attempting to take back to
his storeroom. The ant was wondering if he could seek help from his friend the
grasshopper. Before the ant could ask for help, the grasshopper suggested,
“Why don’t you come and play with me?
You are working way too hard for this fine day.”
The ant replied, “I’m gathering food for the rainy reason. It
would be best if you started to think about what you are going to do for
nourishment during the rainy days.”
“Oh, that’s unnecessary. Raining won’t be that
long. It will be fine soon,” the grasshopper responded, “and there is always time for things like
that. Besides, look around, there’s plenty of food to go around.”
The ant left,
disappointed in his friend, but continued to work. When the rainy season
happened, the grasshopper realized that the place where he stayed was about to
be flooded – no more food and he had nothing stored for himself. “I should have listened to my friend, the ant,”
he thought, “Now I will go hungry.”
……………………..
There are many
lessons we can learn from this story. Here I have two important lessons that I
want to share with you:
First, we must learned what God have revealed (and
continue to reveals) about Himself and about how to live our lives as His
followers from His written Word – the Bible. The grasshopper didn’t listen
and didn’t store food for unexpected long rainy season. When we need to know
something – what’s right and wrong; true and false; truth and lie – it is often
too late to learn. The right concepts of who God is – His characters and
attributes – and our believing faith and abiding trust in Him should be learned
from His Word continuously by head and heart before the ‘rainy season’
that may come in the form of troubles, sufferings, persecutions, trials, doubts
and discouragements comes into our lives. Well-build faith can stand any
weather of life.
Second, we ought not to just learn and apply God’s
Word in our own lives but we must urgently win souls for Christ. The ant do
told the grasshopper about the coming rainy reason, but he wasn’t trying hard
enough. Surely he was well fed from the corn, grain and nuts he had stored
during the fine weather, but he was unable to convince his friend to gather
food to survive the long rain, even though it was for the grasshopper’s own
good. As Christ followers, we must be on mission to tell others about Christ
urgently. Missionary, not maintainer, is our way of life. Yes, we need
to be saved ourselves, but after we are saved then we need to tell others about
the Good News we have in Christ. Convince the lost souls of their sins against
God and their needs for the Saviour. Pray that they may repent. Influence them with
love displayed by your sincere words and living example under the Lordship of
Christ. If we love God, we love people too.
The loving Father, the most awesome Saviour
And the gentle Spirit be with you. Amen.
THINK
BIG. START SMALL. GO DEEP.
No comments:
Post a Comment