Saturday, January 5, 2008

the parrable of the fallen pencil

A friend of mine tagged me to write the parable of the fallen pencil and I in turn would love to see what rock, gus, barry and the guys will do with it.

Here goes mine:

there once were two pencils: a beautiful upright conventional pencil and a rubbery pencil that seemed to lack backbone. Nothing about this pencil was conventional and it would certainly not be allowed in the grade 1 class where everything has to be proper and up to standard. The conventional pencil always looked down on the rubbery pencil and despised him for being different. Much to the dismay of both these pencils, they ended up together in a little boy's pencil bag.

One day, the little boy, in the carelessness of youth, dropped the pencil bag and both pencils fell painfully to the ground. When eventually they were picked up again, the little boy saw that the beautiful upright pencil's point was broken, so he started sharpening it, but no matter how much he sharpened the pencil, it's point kept falling out. The pencil's lead was broken inside and it has lost its usefulness.

In life we are often much like these pencils, some of us are beautiful, upright, conventional people who expect everyone else to fit into our 'conventional' way of thinking and doing things. Some of us never quite fit into the 'conventional' category and my feel unworthy at times. However to survive life's up's and down's - to survive life's falls we need to be a little more flexible, more open to change. It is often our uniqueness that makes us useful in God's hand.

5 comments:

Unknown said...

Hi Bugs, Maybe you can drop me an e-mail (pencil) line sometime seeing we are both aloso involved in outreach ministry. my private e-mail is hermang@mwebiz.co.za.

Unknown said...

sorry the address is mwebbiz with 2 bb's

barry said...

A parable of the fallen pencil

The cleaner noticed that some cretin has pressed chewing gum into the ink pot holder in the desk. He wondered whether he should just leave it there… but looking around for ways to pry the gum out of the hole, he noticed a pencil lying on the ground. Just the implement he needed – he gouged the gum out with the sharp end of the pencil, breaking it’s point in the process. Then he threw the pencil and gum together into a bin nearby. A job well done.

***
Outside, a woman was searching through the bins for a morsel of food. She didn’t much want to dirty the gloves that kept her hands a little warm, so she looked for something to dig and sift through the trash. She grabbed a pencil that was lying on top of the rubbish and proceeded to lift and dig avoiding touching the rubbish with her hands. The pencil proved a useful tool and it went with her toward another set of bins near the park.

***
The ice-cream salesman when frequented the park had lost his padlock, which he used to keep the lid from opening while he rode the bicycle from one selling spot to another. He was waiting on the pavement near the park – near the entrance to the school for the children to come out. Then he would ring his bell and shout “ice-creams”. Waiting there was a part of his daily routine. Looking down he noticed a broken pencil and through he could use that to jam through the latch to keep the lid from opening. The pencil fit snugly in the latch and served well as a temporary measure.

***
Albert was sitting at the bus-stop when it suddenly occurred to him that children at the school across from where he was sitting were the children of this whole community. It suddenly seemed clearer to him that it was not just the work of concerned parents to support the struggling school but that it should be the combined work of the whole community. He found a piece of paper in his pocket and turned it over. Then he looked for a pen but to no avail. But there on the ground near the bus-stop was a broken pencil. The sharpened end was no good. Someone had clearly misused this pencil for excavation-type work – not covered in the pencil’s warranty. But the broken end revealed enough of the pencil’s lead to make it usable to scribble some notes.

***
A local business-women – owner of a couple of restaurants in the area leaned over to Albert. The chair-person of the meeting was rambling on about the potential benefits of supporting local schools and the importance of educating children. She asked Albert if he had a pen to lend her. He reached into his pocket and produced a short, but newly sharpened pencil. She scribbled something on a scrap of paper and passed it to him. Albert smiled when he read the figure. Enough to get the project well under way.

***
Jongi hurried in late – again. The test had already started. He found his usual desk and quickly turned over the paper that was waiting for him. He was about the reach into his school bag to get a pencil when he noticed one lying in the pencil groove on his desk. Broken – shorter than when he last saw it, and clearly worse for wear – like it had been stood on – but newly sharpened, as if someone had left it there for him specially. He recognised his pencil because of the little “J.M.” inscription in the blue. But he didn’t have time to consider how the pencil he lost the week before had got there – he needed to get busy finishing the test!

barry said...

sorry! got a bit carried away...

bugs said...

Love it barry!