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A Parable of Two Different Bills |
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Two bills were waiting in the bank for their turn to go out into the world. One was a little bill, only a dollar: the other was a thousand dollar bill. While lying there side by side, they fell into talking about their usefulness. The dollar bill murmured, "Ah, if I were as big as you, what good I would do. I would move in such high places, and people would be so careful of me wherever I should go. All would admire me and want to take me home with them. But small as I am, what good can I do? Nobody cares for me. I am too little to be of any use."
"Ah, yes, that is so!" said the thousand dollar bill; and it haughtily gathered up its well-trimmed edges that were lying next to the little bill, in conscious superiority. "That is so," it repeated. "If you were as great as I am, a thousand times bigger than you are, then you might do some good in the world." And its face smiled a wrinkle of contempt for the little dollar bill.
Just then the clerk came, took the little murmuring bill and kindly gave it to a poor widow. "God bless you!" she cried, as with a smile she received it. "My dear, hungry children can now have some bread."
A thrill of joy ran through the bill as it was folded up in the widow's hand, and it whispered, "I may do some good even if I am small." And when it saw the bright faces of her fatherless children, it was very glad that is could do a little good.
Then the dollar bill began its journey of usefulness. It went first to the baker for bread; then to the mill; then to the farmer; then to the laborer; then to the doctor; then to the minister. Wherever it went it gave people pleasure, adding something to their comfort and their joy.
At last, after a long, long pilgrimage of usefulness among every sort of people, it came back to the banker again, crumpled, defaced, ragged and softened by its daily use.
Seeing the thousand dollar bill lying there, scarcely a wrinkle or finger mark on it, it exclaimed, "Pray sir, and what has been your mission of usefulness?"
The big bill sadly replied, "I have been from safe to safe among the rich where few could see me, and they were afraid to let me go out far, lest I should be lost. Few indeed are they whom I have made happy on my mission."
The dollar bill replied, "I see now that it is better by far, to be small and to go among the multitude doing good than to be so great as to be imprisoned in the safes of a few."
And it rested satisfied with its lot.
-From Evangelical Christian
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