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
and we see the external clay vessel. 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, then the clay begins to peel away
and the brilliant gem begins to shine forth.
Thank you for looking beyond my clay vessel!