That's why I am a story teller. Through stories we learn about life. We discover what we should treasure and what is emotional trash.
I am, however, passionate about things like freedom and grace and living a life in ways we were created to live. And it's from parables like this we learn of a desperate love someone has for you.
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The King, The Seeker, and The Sage: Part 2
The ancient city had never fallen to an outside assault.
Peace and prosperity blanked the land from the beginning of the king’s
reign.
One day a blight appeared outside the city wall. At first it was a whisper – a question asked behind closed doors of a peasant cottage. Like the juiciest gossip, one flaming tongue lit another, passing the question from one ear to another. The rumor smoldered in one heart, the another and another until it flared into a bonfire outside the bronze city gates across the whole countryside.
A visiting fear-peddler had found welcome at every hearth
and home on both sides of the city wall. Doubter had once tried toppling the king
from outside the kingdom borders; now it was as easy as overthrowing the hearts
of men in the kingdom. All he had to
do was ask questions.
“Have you ever seen
the King?” he quizzed one merchant in the market place.
“How do you know,” the Doubter asked a mother struggling to
corral five children down the street, “the King really cares about you and your
offspring?”
“Just how approachable do you think the King is to a man
such as you?” he whispered to a peasant plowing in the fields.
The Doubter did not rest until his words echoed every day
off the city walls: “Is he really a good king?’
Soon the entire land was touched by this blight. Was there even a king living in the palace? became the the marketplace conversation.
No one who kept and taught the Code of the King had ever been in the presence of His Majesty. Now, with their positions of respect under assault, these self-appointed messengers lectured even harder about the importance of the Code. They leveraged guilt in desperate attempts to drive the disciples of the Doubter out of the kingdom.
As reinforcement, the scribes and prophets of the Code built a literary barrier before the open door of the castle with their massive copies of the Code. Topping the barricade with their own written interpretations of the Code, these enforcers insisted they were the only ones worthy to access the king's presence.
Cut off from his beloved people, the king had stared, grieved at the man-made barrier before him. From inside his chamber, his own voice could not be heard over the preaching and prejudice of the self-righteous as they proclaimed and defended their Code of the King. This monument of man’s wisdom spoke in great detail about the king, but he had longed for his subjects to know him as he loved them.
Now, standing in the courtyard before the obstruction, the king watched with sadness as the Keepers of the Code enslaved his subjects by strapping heavy copies of the Code onto their backs. Men and women were so burdened by the weight they could barely place one step ahead of the other.
A smile crossed the King’s face. His plan was simple. It would silence the people’s fear and banish the Doubter for good. If he succeeded, he would unburden his subjects. Gone were the king’s royal vestments of silk and gold. He was now wrapped in the threadbare cloak of a seeker.
The king turned, passed through the bronze gates, walking toward the hillside.
Now a seeker, he was in search of a flock.
(to be CONTINUED)
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How much do you think the King loves you?
Excerpts from my upcoming book: BREAKTHROUGH!
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