A Simple Story

Deep and profound, complex and multi-layered. Full of intrigue and mystical in places. Making you scratch your head and think, making you reflect on action and see just how things are.

Some people look for that in their stories and that has its place.

There is something, however, to be said about the simple story. The message can have a great impact because of its simplicity. Take this one I came across recently.

There were two guys. A rich guy with lots of cattle and a poor guy who only has one lamb. As it was his only lamb, the poor guy treated it so well it was as good as daughter to him. The rich guy has a guest over and rather than using any of his vast collection, he pops over to the poor guy’s house and takes the one and only lamb to use for dinner.

Simple story.

Nothing too complex about it. We have enough to be getting on with in the story we have. In fact it’s a simple enough story even for an unrepentant man who had deluded himself into thinking he could get away with something similar. He could hear the story and agree on the injustice.

Or another one I came across recently. One guy making his way home from visiting the city for some religious occasion. He’s beaten, robbed and left to within an inch of his life and he’s left battered on the side of the street. An important looking religious guy from the same culture sees him and goes out of his way to avoid him. Another pious looking religious hombre of the same culture also goes round him. Some dude who is from a despised background sees the battered guy, tends to his wounds as best he can and then uses his own resources to get the man to a place of restoration and pays for him to receive the necessary rehabilitation treatment.

That story isn’t that complex at all. It’s fairly straightforward for even an uptight, pious looking religious type to be able to notice who was doing the neighbourly thing in this episode.

Movies, books, television programmes and videos on social media can take minutes and hours to outline a gripping or hilarious story full of twists and turns and great character development that pulls you in to the whole thing.

There’s a lot to be said, however, for the simple story. Sometimes it’s what we need to stop and check ourselves and see if we really know what’s going on.

Just by the simple story.

(Photo by AAron Lee Kuan Leng on Unsplash)

For His Name’s Sake

Shalom

C. L. J. Dryden