the basket of coal
The story is told of an old man who lived on a farm in the mountains of eastern Kentucky with his young grandson. Every morning Grandpa would sit down early at the kitchen table to read his battered old Bible. His grandson, who wanted to be like him, tried to imitate him whenever possible.
One day the grandson asked, “Grandfather, I try to read the Bible, I like it but I don’t understand it, and what I manage to understand I forget when I close the book. What good is there in reading the Bible?”
Grandfather quietly stopped putting coal in the stove and said: “Put down the basket of coal, and go to the river, and bring me a basket full of water.” The boy did as his grandfather told him, although all the water ran out of the basket before he could get back into the house. The grandfather laughed and said, “You’ll have to move a little faster next time,” and He sent him back to the river with the basket to try to bring water in it.
This time the boy ran faster, but the basket was empty again before he reached the house. Out of breath, he told his grandfather that it was “impossible to carry water in a basket,” and he went to get a bucket. The old man stopped him saying “I don’t want a bucket of water, I want a basket of water. You can do it”. At this point, the boy knew that the task was impossible, but he wanted to show his grandfather that even if he ran faster, the water would run out before he got home.
The boy scooped up the water and ran as fast as he could, but when he got to his grandfather’s, the basket was empty again. Exhausted, the boy said “grandfather is useless”. “Why do you think he is useless? Grandpa replied. “Look inside the basket.” He seeing the interior of it understood for the first time that the basket had something different. Instead of a background dirty from charcoal, this one looked clean. “That is the work of God in our lives. He slowly changes us from within until we become His Son.”
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