Submitted by a reader:
Two angels came down to earth, one old, one young. Having no place to sleep, they knocked at the door of a big villa and asked for a place to sleep and were shown to the cellar—not the best place in the house. There was a big hole in the wall, so the old angel fixed it. The next evening– same problem, where to sleep? They knocked on the door of a poor farmer’s house. Simple, poor people– Man, wife, child and just one cow. They invited them to share their food and offered their own bed to sleep in. That night the cow died. The next day on their way again, the young angel asked the old one. “Why did you fix the rich man’s wall and did not prevent the death of the poor man’s only cow?” He answered, “The rich man hid his money in the hole, he will never find it. This night death came to the farmer’s house to take the child’s life and I persuaded him to take the cow’s life. Things are not always what they appear to be.”
A mouse gets chased by a cat, runs to a cow, cries for help. The cow shits on him to hide him. The cat comes, sees the tail of the mouse sticking out of the shit, pulls him out, end of the mouse. Moral: Not everyone who shits on you means bad and not everyone who pulls you out of the shit means well.
The mouse parable is priceless.
I don’t know how in the world we might go about convincing people of the realities of it as they’re getting dumped on and some well-meaning fool is offering them a hand.
I guess that’s why parables are primarily for those whose ears are already open.
I can already tell that this comment is going to come back and bite me in the rump.
Jason Kranzusch