Archive for The Gathering Place "The Gathering Place" is a web community where people can gather and make new friends, share ideas, enjoy a few laughs and learn about many interesting things together. It is a safe place where friends can correspond with each other about what they love.
Once upon a time, there was very wise and loving father who lived in a village far away. He lived there with his children whom he dearly loved. Although the father had much more wealth than any other person in town, he and his children lived a very simple life together. Life was so simple for these children because their greatest delight was simply spending time with their father. Day-after-day, the children talked with their father, learned from their father (they didn't go to a public school, because they were taught by their father who was the smartest man in the village), played with their father, ate with their father and enjoyed the company of their father and one another.
As the children grew older and more mature, this loving father wanted to give them wonderful gifts. He wanted these gifts to be enjoyable to them. He also wanted these gifts to come from his own vast riches. One-by-one, the father gave his children gifts with which they could play, work, travel and learn. They were each very pleased and very thankful for all of their wonderful gifts. Each day, these children would wake up and go talk to their father and tell him how thankful they were for their gifts.
After several years of receiving, enjoying and being so thankful for all the gifts the father gave them, these children began spending more time with the gifts than they did with their loving father. In fact, the father was very sad that his children spent more time enjoying their new gifts than they did enjoying him. It seemed to him that the gifts he gave them out of his love were now destroying their relationship with him.
Over time, the children grew distant to their father. Their gifts consumed them more and more. To make things worse, the children, who had always been so close and giving to one another, began fighting over their gifts. When the father approached the children with the desire to have time together with them, they always had appointments to show their gifts around, work to do on their gifts or play time with their gifts.
After many years, however, the children's gifts began to break, tear up, get lost, wear out or become uninteresting. As this happened, all the children responded differently. Some became angry at their father for giving them gifts that would tear up, and they would not speak to him anymore. Still others had completely forgotten who gave them the gifts in the first place, so they wandered about aimlessly looking for more gifts. Another group of the children, who had not spoken to their father much, called him and asked him to send them more gifts. All of these children were very sad and never really regained the joy they once had with their father.
However, there was one group of children who realized what they had done and ran back to their father to have a close relationship with him again. This group of children asked their father to forgive them. You see, they had learned a very important lesson: When a loving father's good gifts to his children become the reason they do not seek their father, then those gifts can no longer be truly enjoyed.
"No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money. Therefore I say to you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink; nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing? But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you." (Matthew 6:24-25,33)
