Shade Tree Wisdom 9/7/09

It’s so easy to be suspicious, isn’t it? To think the worst of things, to read the ill into any action. To point the finger, forgetting that four always point back to us. Jesus said this, “Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.” Matt. 7, 1.2.

Several men, longtime friends and now all in businesses, had the pleasant habit of ending their week with a dinner together. Now and then they might have a guest, but members always tried to be here. This is a story I recently read, only names are changed. So this evening was nearing its end when one, a coin collector, said, “Today I bought this coin. It’s from the Civil war era and there are only three known to exists, one is in DC, this is the second, and nobody seems to know where the third coin is. I just bought it today.” And he passed it around for inspection. Several moments were spent on talking about coins and collecting, and then he said, “May I have my coin back”. And it was nowhere to be found. All remembered seeing it, but it was simply gone. So they said, “Well, each one will have to be searched”. Sounded fair to all except that night there was a guest, and he simply refused, remarking with some heat, “I will not be searched. I did not steal your coin, why should I be subject to this indignity?” There was protest, and each was searched, except the guest, and the coin was sill lost.

You could nearly feel, hovering over that guest, a dark cloud of suspicion. There were some murmurings about police when the waiter, in clearing the table, moved the pepper shaker to its usual place, and there was the coin. It had been covered by accident. Now that dark cloud was replaced by something like shame.

Then the guest explained. “I am a coin collector also, and on my way to this dinner I stopped at my dealers and bought this coin”. ( It was the third coin.). “Would you have accepted any explanation from me before?”

I am sure most of us have said, “I wish I hadn’t said that”. But just take this moral home, that words, like arrows shot into the air, fall to earth, we know not where. James said about the tongue“5 So also the tongue is a small part of the body, and yet it boasts of great things. Behold, how great a forest is set aflame by such a small fire! 6 And the tongue is a fire, the very world of iniquity; the tongue is set among our members as that which defiles the entire body, and sets on fire the course of our life, and is set on fire by hell.” James 3,5.6.

GPD 9/7/09