Clay Balls
April 17th 2009 00:05
I, just like everyone else, am swept up in the emotion over the lady from Scotland who took on audience condescension and won. I got an email from a friend a few days ago before Susan hit our hearts that I have reproduced down below. It relates very much to how we treat others.
I have found people to be so caught up in appearances instead of who we are. The looks on the faces of the audience before she sang summed us all up as society. We all lack tolerance for those who look or act differently by means of colour, class, weight, age or looks except for when they then turn out to have some amazing talent like Susan does. Right up until last week, kids teased her and people mocked her for what she looks like and the life she lives. I'm quite sure some of them knew she could sing and sing well.
Is that who we are as a society? Is that what we wish to teach our children? That it's okay to exclude someone for their looks and then when they are "discovered" to have a talent, to then find them acceptable? We are very much superficial. Before we start to judge others let us remember the story of the clay balls.
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 and every one of us. If we take the time to get to know that person, and if we ask God 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.
I have found people to be so caught up in appearances instead of who we are. The looks on the faces of the audience before she sang summed us all up as society. We all lack tolerance for those who look or act differently by means of colour, class, weight, age or looks except for when they then turn out to have some amazing talent like Susan does. Right up until last week, kids teased her and people mocked her for what she looks like and the life she lives. I'm quite sure some of them knew she could sing and sing well.
Is that who we are as a society? Is that what we wish to teach our children? That it's okay to exclude someone for their looks and then when they are "discovered" to have a talent, to then find them acceptable? We are very much superficial. Before we start to judge others let us remember the story of the clay balls.
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 and every one of us. If we take the time to get to know that person, and if we ask God 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.
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