The Japanese Farmer and his Orchard

From my cousin, Donnie.  A beautiful story Heart2Heart would like to pass on.

“Wanted to share with you a short story that I heard from a priest during his homily yesterday (Greenbelt Chapel). I thought its a nice message to receive during this first week of lent and right after the Tsunami.”

It was mid-day when a farmer was tending to the fruit trees in his orchard. His orchard was a hill that looked out into the sea. He thanked the Lord as he looked upon the abundance, the size the fruits of his tree. He spent nearly a lifetime nurturing each tree since they were just seeds.

He then turned his head to look out into the sea; he noticed a huge wave moving very quickly towards land. It was a Tsunami and he thanked God that he, his orchard and his family would be safe because they were on the hill. He looked down into the coast and from the distance saw his friends gathered for a party; they were enjoying each other’s company and were completely oblivious to the disaster that was about to hit them. The farmer panicked; he had to help his friends and he had to do it very fast. The only solution he could think of was to draw their attention by burning down his orchard. He quickly set about burning his orchard. He prayed hard that his friends would see it, be alerted, and somehow do something to save themselves from the approaching Tsunami. The people in the party saw the orchard burning. Some of them saw the orchard burning, stopped what they were doing and enjoying in the party. They were worried about the the farmer and his orchard; they rushed up the hill to help save the farmer, his family and his orchard from the fire. THEY WERE SAVED from the TSUNAMI. They thought they were doing something good, a favor for the farmer. In the end, it was the farmer who did them a favor at a huge sacrifice to himself. The others who ignored the fire and thus did not rush up the hill perished.

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