A MEANINGFUL PACK OF BISCUITS

-- Author Unknown


One night there was a woman at the airport who had to wait for several hours before catching her next flight. While she waited she bought a book and a pack of biscuits to spend the time. She looked for a place to sit and waited. She was deep into her book, when suddenly she realized that there was a young man sitting next to her who was stretching his hand, with no concern whatsoever, and grabbing the pack of cookies lying between them. He started to eat them one by one. Not wanting to make a fuss about it she decided to ignore him. The woman, slightly bothered, ate the cookies and watched the clock, while the young and shameless thief of biscuits was also finishing them. The woman started to get really angry at this point and thought "If I wasn't such a good and educated person, I would have given this daring man a black eye by now."

Every time she ate a biscuit, he had one too. The dialogue between their eyes continued and when only one biscuit was left, she wondered what he was going to do. Softly and with a nervous smile, the young man grabbed the last biscuit and broke it in two. He offered one half to the woman while he ate the other half. Briskly she took the biscuit and thought, What an insolent man! How uneducated! He didn't even thank me!"

She had never met anybody so fresh and sighed relieved to hear her flight announced. She grabbed bags and went towards the boarding gate refusing to look to where that insolent thief was seated. After boarding the plane and nicely seated, she looked for her book which was nearly finished by now. While looking into her bag, she was totally surprised to find her pack of biscuits neatly intact. If my biscuits are here, she thought feeling terribly, those others were his and he tried to share them with me. Too late to apologize to the young man, she realized with pain, that it was her who had been insolent, uneducated and a thief, and not him.

How many times in our lives have we known with certainty that something happened in a certain way, only to discover later that it wasn't true? How many times has our lack of trust made us judge other people unfairly? True sharing and giving doesn't start and end with a material exchange or a physical providing of tangible goods. True sharing and giving starts and ends with pure intentions... minus the false judgments, expectations of something in return, external rewards, and pretenses.

When we give, we should give to give... that should be reason enough.

Forwarded by Jun Acebron

Prayer