Mud and Miracles

There's a Hebrew Midrash (a midrash is a story that reads between the lines of the Hebrew scriptures, they vary from the sublime to the ridiculous) that tells of two men, Reuven and Shimon, who were present when the Red Sea miraculously parted and the Israelites escaped from their Egyptian oppressors.

Thing is, Reuven and Shimon only noticed the mud beneath their feet.

"This is terrible! There is mud all over my shoes!" said Reuven

"It's even getting onto my clothes, it's disgusting." replied Shimon, "It's just like the mud we had to use to make bricks when we were slaves."

"It's no different being free and being slave, mud everywhere!" complained Reuven.

And so they went all the way through the Red Sea, without noticing the miracle.

The point of this story, of course, is that it matters what we focus on. We can spend an entire lifetime focusing on the mud, of which there is plenty, or we can focus on the beauty, the miraculous, of which there is just as much.

Be careful what you lay your eyes on.

Pierre