Now, some of you might be thinking, “He’s a preacher, so he’s going to say, ‘The Bible’, right?”
C’mon, not every answer is, “Jesus!”
He's also a Pyrat, but not everything's about Rum!
Sometimes it's about beer, or wine, or tequila!
And don't forget the booty!
As a child, my favorite book was a collection of fairy tales. In those stories of distant kingdoms, dark forests, wicked witches and damsels in distress, were lessons for life. In fact, many of the unsanitized versions of the tales of the Brothers Grimm were specifically designed to scare small children into doing right.
Nonetheless, my favorite – and most formative – tale was called “The Three Sillies”.
The story is about a young farmer’s daughter being courted by a gentleman. He arrives at the farmhouse one evening, and the parents send the young woman to the cellar to draw a pitcher of beer.
This time, however, on her trip to the cellar, she notices a large wooden mallet stuck in the rafters above where she is drawing the beer. As the tap flows, her mind begins to wander, and she imagines marrying the gentleman. They have a son, who grows up and one day comes to that very cellar to draw beer. But on that day, the large wooden mallet dislodges itself and falls on the son’s head and kills him. The woman sits down and cries for her “poor dead son”.
Her mother comes in search of her, upon which she recounts the whole imaginary tale, and the mother bursts into tears herself. The father, likewise, ends up with them, crying in the middle of the cellar for his “dead grandson”.
Finally, the gentleman comes in search of his beer. When apprised of the situation, he tells them they are the silliest people he has ever met. He declares he is leaving on a long journey, and will not return to marry the daughter unless he finds three people more silly than they.
Fortunately, he does find three sillier people, and the story has a happy ending. I encourage you to Google “The Three Sillies” to get all the details. I promise, it’ll be worth the effort.
Here are three points I learned from this simple, silly story.
First, crying about “what might be” is never productive. In fact, it often just makes you look silly. The truth is, the future is not in our hands; you can’t 100% predict what might be. For example, you can live a healthy life – eat right, exercise, avoid excesses – but then you get hit by a bus on your way to work. And while that “might happen”, it is sillier to not eat right, exercise and avoid excesses simply for fear of getting hit by a bus!
Second, be proactive. When you see a hammer that could potentially fall on someone’s head (whether real or metaphorical), do something about it. Get a chair or a long stick or whatever it takes and dislodge the problem. Then, the next time you go to draw your beer, you won’t have to worry about something falling on your head. How simple is that?
And third, no matter how silly you are, trust me, there is always someone sillier than you.
For example, in the news this week:
But now that the President has released the official document, Trump’s response is (predictably), ‘It is rather amazing that all of the sudden the document surfaces… It should be inspected to ensure its authenticity.’
Of course, in true Trump fashion, he takes full credit for “forcing” the President to release the document, "...something no one else has been able to do."
3) And finally, our third “silly” is 89-year-old Harold Camping, who, through careful examination of the Bible has determined that Judgment Day will occur on May 21, 2011.
(I was going to wait to write about this one, but I was afraid some of you might not be around to read it!)
Obviously then, says Camping, the End of the World will follow five months later, on October 21st.
What’s really amazing about this – besides the fact that he’s got a small army of followers who are fronting money to buy billboards announcing the End of the World – is how he arrived at this date. Bible Scholars, pay close attention now!
According to an article in HuffPo, Camping claims, “…the Bible contains clues that brook no argument. God tells Noah the world will end in seven days; the Bible also equates a day to 1,000 years. The date of the flood has been set at 4990 B.C., so adding 7,000 years plus one for the missing year "0" produces the year 2011. Translating a biblical reference to a month and day, from the Hebrew calendar to the Gregorian, results in May 21.”
I must have skipped that day in seminary…
Anyway, I believe I have found three people sillier than myself… in just a week!
And with that, I am returning to the farmhouse for that pint of beer!
Gee, I hope that farmer’s daughter is cute!
