Once there was a crooked young apple tree whom the gardener overheard scolding away to himself. The sky was very cloudy, said the crooked apple-tree, and he wondered why the sun did not shine. The birds kept chattering in his branches so that he could not think, and the gardener had left a heap of rubbish at his foot. He wished it might be cleared away. When the gardener heard this, he spoke sharply to the crooked tree. “You are worrying about the wrong things,” said he. “What you ought to worry about is that crook in your trunk. Why don’t you straighten yourself? The clouds, and the birds, and the rubbish heap will all soon be gone, but that crook in your trunk will be there forever if you do not straighten it out while you are young.”
There was a muddy brook tumbling down to the sea, and as it hurried along it kept growling about the ugly weeds on the bank, about the hot sun that made its head ache, about the sharp rocks that hurt its feet. Indeed, the muddy brook was all stirred up. But a kind tree bent over it and gave it a bit of advice: “You are worrying about the wrong things,” said the tree. “What you need to worry about is this mud that makes you ugly,—yes, far uglier than the weeds on the bank,—and unfits you for any good use. You will soon pass by the weeds, and the sharp rocks, and all the rest; but unless you get rid of the mud, men will despise you.”
There was once a larva that had in him the making of a beautiful butterfly, but this larva did nothing but grumble. The leaves he had to eat were not tender enough, their taste was stale, and the tree he was feeding upon did not give him enough shade. While he was grumbling away to himself, his comrade, who was feeding near by, said: “Brother, you are worrying over the wrong things. I see that an ichneumon fly has laid his eggs on your back. Unless you rub it off at once, the egg will hatch into a worm that will feed upon you and kill you.”
There was once a boy, who got terribly cross one day about the rain-storm that came up just as he was about to go on a picnic. He got sulky the next day because he could not have a new bicycle. He would not work at school the third day because another boy got ahead of him in his studies. And after this went on for many days, his father gave him a long and earnest talk. “The trouble with you, my boy,” he said, “is that you worry about the wrong things, about rain on holidays, and because you cannot have your own way, and because you cannot get ahead of the other boys. The real things to be sorry for are your crossness and your sulkiness and your stupidity. These are the only things that hurt you.”
Our lesson, today, children, shows us how Christ was sad over the sad things, and sorry for the things for which he should have been sorry. He did not mourn because he was poor, and because he was scorned by men, and because they sought to kill him, but he grieved because of their sins. Is not this a lesson for all of us?