Wednesday, May 13, 2009

An old story

You all know the saying:
"It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God."
But some times a rich man makes it through, like the one in the following story:

Once upon a time an orphan boy grew up as an apprentice into a merchant’s house.
After the demise of his benefactor the young man went into the world and started his own trade business.
Soon his fortune started to rise and money started to fill his coffers.

The young man never forgot his humble beginning and he helped all the people in need: The sick and the poor, the crippled and the destitute, and as his wealth grew his generosity increased as well.
Good fortune follow him in every enterprise and soon he became legendary both for his riches as well for his good deeds.

But after years and years of work he grew old and pretty soon he contemplate his inevitable end.
The problem was that he never got married, he never had any children and he did not know of any relatives.
So he began to pray to God every day for the remaining of his life.

One night God heard his plea and came to him in a dream.
“What can I do fro you my good man?” Asked God.
“I have worked hard all my life and now my wealth is going to be taken by strangers.
I would like you to let me take it with me when I die, o great and just God!”
God pondered for a while and then responded.
“You know that you can't take it with you, but considering your life of good deeds I will make an exception. See that chest in the corner? You can take it with you when you die.”

So the old man sold all his possessions and bought as much gold bars as to fill up his treasure chest.
Not long after that the angel of death came to take him to paradise.

At the pearly gates St Peter seeing the heavy chest stopped the old man
“Wait a minute – you can not bring that in here. It is against the rules!”
“But God granted me a special permission.” Said the old man.
“Let me check that out.” Said the saint and looked into his admission log.
“Yep, you’re right, there is a note here saying you can bring a chest with worldly possessions, but I will have to check so it doesn’t have any unholy content.”
“Sure thing” Said the old man and lifted the chest lid.

St Peter looked inside the chest at the glimmering bars of gold and his eyes popped out in amazement. He turned to the old man in disbelief:
“You brought in pavement?”

9 comments:

TALON said...

LOL!

molly said...

Pavement?

I am not 100% sure I get the punch-line.

Really. :)

Quantum_Flux said...

Well, I'm sure a radar beam should be able to hit just such a "golden" place.

Diego said...

ROTFLMAO! Moral: Don't take coal to Newcastle!

Unknown said...

@ Molly – Heaven is supposedly paved with gold – in the Christian mythology.
So, is like taking a refrigerator to the North Pole or like Diego said; bringing coal to Newcastle – where I assume they have coal galore.
So that is the funny part.
It also has a morale hint to it; material wealth is worthless in a spiritual world :)

@ Quantum – When I was a kid I had nightmares of angels being sucked in by jet airplanes, but then I learned it was all a metaphor :)

Anonymous said...

I have told that tale to my nephews for many years and we always laugh about it - it fits the personality of someone we know that would do exactly that. He he!

Brigit said...

I haven't heard that tale before. I love it.Quite a lot can be learned from that.

Sylvie said...

Very funny :) OTOH, poor old dude - that's all he had to bring along. Ah well...

Unknown said...

@ Lydia – Thank you Lydia.
Some times we make things way to complicated and get tangled in our own reasoning.
It is important to step out of the clutter and simplify our life – at least from time to time :)

@ Damien – Everybody loves my drawings. Wow!
I see my self as a god story teller – I hope – but I think my drawing sucks.
You are just to kind.

@ Annaly – Thank you so much for stopping by my blog and for your nice comment!

@ Sylvie – Excellent point:
You always have a choice.
If life gives you lemons make lemonade!

@ Mr. Fish – Another excellent point:
You can choose to react others negativity or you can choose to act on your own positivity.

@ Barbara – I’ve been on the way of pain and anger for too long.
Sorry but it doesn’t lead to the gates of forever bliss.
It just perpetuates the pain and suffering and gives you excuses for more failure in your life.
But then again we all have free will and people have the right to choose whatever they want.

@ Samurai – Absolutely!
Part of the healing process is to surround yourself with positive, loving and supportive people.
But you have to get out of the “I am the victim” state of mind if you want that help.
Other wise you will end up pushing your true friends away and attracting more abusers.