Little Balls Of Clay
A man was
exploring caves by the seashore. In one of the caves he found a canvas bag
with a bunch of little hardened clay balls. The little clumps or balls of clay 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 to pass the time of day, 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 little balls and it cracked open on a
rock. Inside was a beautiful, precious stone! He couldn’t believe his
eyes! Excited, the man started breaking open the remaining clay
balls. Each contained a similar treasure. Presumably hidden by
pirates many years ago, he found thousands of dollars worth of jewels in the 20
or so balls of clay that he had left. Then it struck him. He had been on the
beach a long time and he had thrown maybe 50 or 60 of the clay balls with their
hidden treasure into the ocean waves. He knew they would now be impossible to ever find again. Instead
of thousands of dollars in treasure, he could have taken home tens of thousands.
He had just thrown away a fortune!
It's like
that with people. We look at someone, maybe even ourselves, and we only see
their external covering of clay. The person doesn't look like much from
the outside; they aren’t beautiful or sparkling so we discount them as
being of little or no value. We see that person as less important than someone
more beautiful and stylish or well known and wealthy. The sad reality is we haven’t
taken the time to find the treasure hidden inside.
There’s a
treasure in each and every one of us and we are all valuable to God. If we
take the time to get to know others, we will often see the clay begin to peel
away and a brilliant gem begin to shine. May we not come to the end of our
lives and find we have thrown away a fortune in friendships, simply because the
gems were hidden just beneath the surface. May we see the people in our
world as valuable as God sees them.
Author Unknown (edited)
