MORAL STORIES

A PRECIOUS PRESCRIPTION

A thoroughly depressed person consulted a doctor and described his ailments.The doctor wrote a prescription on a paper and gave it to him, saying, “This is the only solution to your problems. It will cure you miraculously.”

The patient was glad. He ran with the folded prescription to a pharmacist and asked for the medicine. The pharmacist was a non-Christian. He read the prescription but could not understand it. So he said, “This medicine is not available here.” The patient took the paper to a different pharmacist. This man was a Christian. He read it and smiled. “This medicine is already with you. Go home and start the treatment without delay”, he advised.

To the confused patient, the pharmacist said, “Read it carefully. It is a verse from the Bible. Read it and follow it.” The patient looked at the paper. It read “1 Peter 5:7”. Reaching home, he read the words from his Bible: “LEAVE ALL YOUR WORRIES WITH HIM BECAUSE HE CARES FOR YOU.”

There is a story about the pendulum of a wall-clock. The clock was working perfectly as its pendulum was swinging incessantly, making a constant, rhythmic ‘tick-tick’ sound.The pendulum thought about his future. It calculated the number of times it has to tick per every second, minute, day, week, month and year. The number became larger and larger. As it became very large, the pendulum became very upset and felt exhausted. It told the clock about its worry. The old clock advised the pendulum, “Don’t worry about your future unnecessarily. Be calm and concentrate on a single tick at a time.”

There is a legend about an angel. He was sent to the world on an assignment. He was to study the problems of men.The angel could see many men carrying huge packets on their heads. Many were exhausted and some fell down as if the load was unbearable. The angel asked one of the men, “Brother, what is the heavy load that you carry in the packet?” He replied, “It contains the worries about my past and the anxiety about the problems awaiting me in the future. The angel stopped him, removed the packet, opened it and showed him. The man was surprised to find that the packet was empty. The angel consoled him, “Those were the products of your own imagination.Yesterday’s worries have vanished. Tomorrow’s troubles have not arrived. So enjoy a pleasant ‘today’ and drop the imaginary burden.” The present is a ‘present’ or gift of God.

Jesus advises, “So do not worry about tomorrow, it will have enough worries of its own. There is no need to add to the troubles each day brings” {Matthew 6: 34}.

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This is story No. 125 in this site. Please click ‘older posts’ at bottom of page to read previous stories in this site.

By: Dr. Babu Philip, Professor, Cochin University of Science & Technology, Fine Arts Avenue, Kochi-682016, Kerala, India.