How grateful I am to my daughter Lauren, who sent me these parables. She knew that my time would be busy visiting with our new little grandson and family. Having these inspiring and motivational parables were just what I needed the last couple of days. I hope you enjoy them as much as I did!
Good night dear friends!
The Parable of the Owl Express
During
my college days, I was one of a class of students appointed to fieldwork as a
part of our prescribed courses in geology—the science that deals with the earth
in all of its varied aspects and phases, but more particularly with its
component rocks, the structural features they present, the changes they have
undergone and are undergoing—the science of worlds.
A
certain assignment had kept us in the field many days. We had traversed,
examined, and charted miles of lowlands and uplands, valleys and hills, mountain
heights and canyon defiles. As the time allotted to the investigation drew near
its close, we were overtaken by a violent windstorm, followed by a heavy
snow—unseasonable and unexpected, but which, nevertheless, increased in
intensity so that we were in danger of being snowbound in the hills. The storm
reached its height while we were descending a long and steep mountainside
several miles from the little railway station at which we had hoped to take [a]
train that night for home. With great effort we reached the station late at
night while the storm was yet raging. We were suffering from the intense cold
incident to biting wind and driving snow; and, to add to our discomfiture, we
learned that the expected train had been stopped by snowdrifts a few miles from
the little station at which we waited.
…
The train for which we so expectantly and hopefully waited was the Owl Express—a
fast night train connecting large cities. Its time schedule permitted stops at
but few and these the most important stations; but, as we knew, it had to stop
at this out-of-the-way post to replenish the water supply of the locomotive.
Long
after midnight the train arrived in a terrific whirl of wind and snow. I
lingered behind my companions as they hurriedly clambered aboard, for I was
attracted by the engineer, who during the brief stop, while his assistant was
attending to the water replenishment, bustled about the engine, oiling some
parts, adjusting others, and generally overhauling the panting locomotive. I
ventured to speak to him, busy though he was. I asked how he felt on such a
night—wild, weird, and furious, when the powers of destruction seemed to be let
loose, abroad and uncontrolled, when the storm was howling and when danger
threatened from every side. I thought of the possibility—the probability even—of
snowdrifts or slides on the track, of bridges and high trestles which may have
been loosened by the storm, of rock masses dislodged from the mountainside—of
these and other possible obstacles. I realized that in the event of accident
through obstruction on or disruption of the track, the engineer and the fireman
would be the ones most exposed to danger; a violent collision would most likely
cost them their lives. All of these thoughts and others I expressed in hasty
questioning of the bustling, impatient engineer.
His
answer was a lesson not yet forgotten. In effect he said, though in jerky and
disjointed sentences: “Look at the engine headlight. Doesn’t that light up the
track for a hundred yards [90 m] or more? Well, all I try to do is to cover that
hundred yards of lighted track. That I can see, and for that distance I know the
roadbed is open and safe. And,” he added, with what, through the swirl and the
dim lamplighted darkness of the roaring night, I saw was a humorous smile on his
lips and a merry twinkle of his eye, “believe me, I have never been able to
drive this old engine of mine—God bless her!—so fast as to outstrip that hundred
yards of lighted track. The light of the engine is always ahead of me!”
As
he climbed to his place in the cab, I hastened to board the first passenger
coach; and as I sank into the cushioned seat, in blissful enjoyment of the
warmth and general comfort, offering strong contrast to the wildness of the
night without, I thought deeply of the words of the grimy, oil-stained engineer.
They were full of faith—the faith that accomplishes great things, the faith that
gives courage and determination, the faith that leads to works. What if the
engineer had failed, had yielded to fright and fear, had refused to go on
because of the threatening dangers? Who knows what work may have been hindered,
what great plans may have been nullified, what God-appointed commissions of
mercy and relief may have been thwarted had the engineer weakened and
quailed?
For
a little distance the storm-swept track was lighted up; for that short space the
engineer drove on!
We
may not know what lies ahead of us in the future years, nor even in the days or
hours immediately beyond. But for a few yards, or possibly only a few feet, the
track is clear, our duty is plain, our course is illumined. For that short
distance, for the next step, lighted by the inspiration of God, go on!
She found the story
here:
"Let your faith be bigger than your fear"
"Nothing is impossible, the word itself says " I'm Possible" ~ Audrey Hepburn
