One leaf left...

I noticed one special thing on my birthday morning. The tree outside my bedroom window stood stark & bare, its leaves shriveled & dead, had fallen to the waiting earth. Except for one. Pale, taut, sapped of its nourishing juices, it clung tenaciously to the very top of the tree. One leaf left. One leaf alone against the wind & the chilling snow flurries, hanging on for its life, refusing to give into nature’s persistent invitation to die.


There was something poetic about the way that leaf resisted as long as it did, high at the top, long after the others had gone the way of millions of leaves before them. Day after, as we watched the little drama through me bedroom’s window, my mother openly cheered the leaf’s courage, “Hang in there!” she’d say. And my brother would say, “What’s the matter with you? It’s just a stupid leaf?”

Then one quite moment, as I stood by the window alone, I gleaned an invaluable lesson from that pathetic little leaf. Illuminated by lights from nearby apartments, it still clung stubbornly to the top of the naked tree & watching it, I was suddenly filled with hope – warming, uplifting, healing hope.

It was as if the Lord were telling me that when everything grimly crumbles, when the crowd drifts away without me, when every element seemed to oppose & torment, I can turn to Him for hope & strength to cling to the top & refuse to be defeated.

The next morning, the leaf had finally fallen & been blown away. I knew it eventually would, of course. And like many last hopes, perhaps it was crushed by a careless passerby.

But there would be more in the spring, I thought. There’s always hope.

I love it into him...

I was shopping in a drug store one day. I noticed a small boy taking jars from a low counter & playing 'train' with them on the floor. The clerk saw him & shouted, "Leave those things alone, you'll break them." The child turned a puzzled face to the clerk. At that moment, I noticed that the little boy was not completely normal. After a pause, he began playing with the items. The clerk scolded him again; his voice was louder this time.


Suddenly, a girl about 7 years old appeared from around the end of the counter, ran to the boy & bending on her knees beside him, put an arm about him & began to speak softly. I couldn't hear what she said to him. But the boy slowly & carefully began to replace the items on the shelf.

The little girl then rose to her feet & faced the clerk," He doesn't understand when you talk that way". She said," He understands what I say because I love it into him".

Scorpions sting, humans ...?

A man saw a scorpion floundering around in a puddle of water. Spontaneous desire to save arouses in his heart, and without hesitating he stretched out his hand, lifted out the scorpion from the puddle & put it on dry ground. The scorpion stung him. The scorpion resumed its walk & headed straight again into the puddle.

Seeing it floundering & drowning again, the man picked it up the second time & was again stung. Another man who came along & saw all that happened said to him,” Why are you so stupid? Now you see you have been stung not once but twice! It’s a silly thing to try to save a scorpion!”

The man replied,” Sir, I can’t help it. You see, it is the nature of the scorpion to sting. But it is my nature to love. Why should I give up my nature to love just because it is the nature of the scorpion to sting?”

True, the man could have exercised the same wisdom & used a stick to lift out the scorpion. But then he might have thought threat a scorpion in such dire straits would not sting him. Whatever it might be, the moral of the story is in spontaneous response of the man in wanting to save another living being, even though it may be an insect. It also shows that a truly compassionate man is such that even though he may receive ingratitude from a person whom he had helped, it doesn’t matter to him. It is just his nature to help & if he could help again, he would. He doesn’t know how to harbor any bitterness or grudge.

Compassion, then is the language of the heart. At the time when we are motivated by love & compassion, we reach out to help without discrimination as to the race, creed or nationality of another. In the light of compassion, identification to race, creed etc, becomes secondary; they become insignificant.

Don’t give up loving. Don’t give up your goodness even if people around you sting.