Estes Echo
Written in Sand and Stone
Two friends were walking through the desert and got into an argument. One friend slapped the other one in the face. The one who got slapped was hurt, but without saying anything, wrote in the sand: “Today my best friend slapped me in the face.”
They kept walking until they found an oasis. Thirsty, they stopped for water. The one who had been slapped got stuck in the mire, fell in, and started drowning. His friend saved him.
That evening, he wrote on a stone, “Today my best friend saved my life.”
The friend who had slapped and saved his best friend asked him, “After I hurt you, you wrote in the sand and now you write on a stone. Why?”
He replied: “When someone hurts us we should write it in sand where the winds of forgiveness can erase it away. But, when someone does something good for us, we must engrave it in stone where it will long be remembered.”
Learn to write your hurts in sand and carve your benefits in stone. Someone observed that it takes a minute to fi nd a special person, an hour to appreciate them, a day to love them, but an entire lifetime to forget them.
–submitted (via Central church of Christ Paducah, KY
Bulletin Digest (Feb. 2005)
