After enjoying a wonderful family week at the beach, I must admit that it has been hard returning to reality. Our self-imposed temporary banishment from all our routine distractions and our focus on our little world was both refreshing and illuminating.
I love this week’s story so much! I feel certain that I must have shared it with you in the past but, today, being sandwiched between Mother’s and Father’s Day, and wanting so desperately to feel good about where we are, even as we dream of faraway places or different times, I hope you find this week’s selection an uplifting and a worthy distraction in this moment of your time.
Its message is as simple as it is beautiful: What we seem to see too often clouds our ability to see who we really are and how much better we are than we seem.
Our acts can be no wiser than our thoughts.
Our thinking can be no wiser than our understanding. -George S. Clason
All day long the little boy worked hard, in field and barn and shed, for his people were poor farmers, and could not pay a workman; but at sunset there came an hour that was all his own, for his father had given it to him. Then the boy would go up to the top of a nearby hill and gaze across at another hill that rose some miles away. On this far hill stood a house with windows of clear gold and diamonds. They shone and blazed so that it caused the boy to have to squint his eyes to even look at them.
One day the boy’s father called to him saying: “You have been a good boy and have thus earned a holiday. Take this day for own; but remember that God gave it to you, so try to learn something good from it in His honor.”
The boy hugged and thanked his father, and he kissed his mother. Then he filled his pockets with pieces of warm, freshly baked bread and started off to find the house with the golden windows.
It was pleasant walking. His bare feet made marks in the white dust, and when he looked back, the footprints seemed to be following him and providing him company. His shadow too, kept beside him, and would dance or run with him as he pleased; so, it was very cheerful.
By and by he felt hungry, and he sat down by a brown brook that ran through a tall hedgerow that appeared to frame one side of the road. There he ate his bread and drank his fill of the clear and cool water. Then he scattered the crumbs for the birds, as his mother had taught him to do, and he continued on his way.
The afternoon was passing when he came to a high green hill; and when he had climbed the hill, there was the house on the top. But it seemed as if the shutters were closed on the windows, for he could not see the golden windows. He came up to the house, and then he could well have wept, for the house’s windows were of clear glass, like any others, and there was no gold or diamonds anywhere about them.
A woman came to the door. She looked kindly at the boy and inquired as to what the lad wanted.
“I saw the golden windows from our hilltop,” he answered, “and I came to see them, but now I see that they are only glass.”
The woman laughed, shaking her head.
“We are poor farming people,” she said, “and are not likely to have gold about our windows. But glass is much better than gold to see through.”
Next, she bade the boy to sit down on the broad stone step at the door, then she brought him a cup of milk and a cake and told him to rest a bit. Then she called her daughter, a child of his own age, and nodded kindly at the two and went back to her work.
The little girl was barefooted like himself, and wore a plain brown cotton gown, but her hair was golden just like the windows he had seen, and her eyes were blue like the sky at noon. She led the boy about the farm and showed him her black calf with a white star on his forehead, and he told her about his own back at home, which was red like a chestnut, with four white feet. Then after they had eaten an apple together, and had quickly become friends, the boy asked her about the golden windows. The little girl nodded and replied that she knew all about them. He was right about the golden windows, only he had mistaken the house.
“You’ve come quite the wrong way!” she said. “Come with me and I will show you the house with golden windows, and then you will see for yourself.”
They went to a nearby knoll that rose behind the farmhouse, and as they went the little girl told him that the golden windows could only be seen at a certain hour, about sunset.
“Yes, I already know that!” replied the boy.
When they reached the top of the hill, the girl turned and pointed; and there on a hill far away stood a house with windows of clear gold and diamonds, just as he had seen them. And when he looked again, the boy saw that it was his own home.
Then he told the girl that he must leave. He gave her his best pebble, the white one with a red band, that he had carried for over a year in his pocket, and she gave him three horse-chestnuts, one red like satin, one spotted, and one white like milk. Then he kissed her and promised to come again, but he did not tell her what he had learned. He went briskly down the hill, and the little girl, framed in the light of the fading sun, she watched as he also faded from view.
The way home was long, and it was dark before he returned home; but the lamplight and the firelight shone through the windows, making them almost as bright as when he had seen them from the faraway hilltop. When he opened the door, his mother ran to kiss him, and his little sister threw her arms about his neck, and his father looked up and smiled from his seat by the fire.
“Have a good day, Son?”
“Yes, Sir,” the boy answered, “it was a very good day!”
“And did you learn anything worthy of our Good Lord’s honor?
“Yes, Sir,” the boy confidently responded, “I have learned that our house has windows of gold and diamonds.”
By wisdom is a house built, by understanding is it made firm; And by knowledge are its rooms filled with every precious and pleasing possession. –Proverbs, 24:3-4
Have an AWE-full Weekend!
William “Bill” Bacque