Clay Balls {Insp}

"Clay Balls"

A man was exploring caves by the seashore. In one
of the caves he found a canvas bag with a bunch of
hardened clay balls. It was like someone had rolled
clay balls and left them out in the sun to bake.

They didn't look like much, but they intrigued the
man, so he took the bag out of the cave with him.
As he strolled along the beach, he would throw the
clay balls one at a time out into the ocean as far
as he could.

He thought little about it, until he dropped one of
the clay balls and it cracked open on a rock. Inside
was a beautiful, precious stone!

Excited, the man started breaking open the remaining
clay balls. Each contained a similar treasure. He
found thousands of dollars worth of jewels in the
20 or so clay balls he had left. Then it struck him.

He had been on the beach a long time. He had
thrown maybe 50 or 60 of the clay balls with their
hidden treasure into the ocean waves. Instead of
thousands of dollars in treasure, he could have
taken home tens of thousands, but he had just
thrown it away!

It's like that with people. We look at someone,
maybe even ourselves, and we see the external
clay vessel. It doesn't look like much from the
outside. It isn't always beautiful or sparkling,
so we discount it.

We see that person as less important than someone
more beautiful or stylish or well known or wealthy
but we have not taken the time to find the treasure
hidden inside that person.

There is a treasure in each one of us. If we take the
time to get to know that person, and if we ask G~d to
show us that person the way He sees them, then the
clay begins to peel away and the brilliant gem begins
to shine forth.

May we not come to the end of our lives and find out
that we have thrown away a fortune in friendships
because the gems were hidden in bits of clay.

May we see the people in our world as G~d sees
them.

I am so blessed by the gems of friendship I have
with each of you. Thank you for looking beyond
my clay vessel.
Received on Sun Nov 26 11:32:02 2006