Little Reminders
Don’t stop me if you’ve heard this one; it bears repeating. And I’m definitely repeating it: I posted it on my old blog back in 2014 after hearing it somewhere around 2009. I still don’t know the origins of this story, but it’s one that sticks with you. Ready? Here we go:
The Carrot, the Egg, and the Coffee
A young woman is telling her troubles to her grandma. The granddaughter is struggling in life, and she’s growing tired of the struggle, tired of the fight. Problems just keep coming, and she’s about ready to give up.
Her grandma, as they do, quietly fires up the stove and puts on three pots of water to boil. She takes a carrot and drops it into the first pan of boiling water. She puts an egg into the second. And she spoons some coffee into a filter, ties it closed, and drops it into the third pot.
After a few minutes, she takes out the carrot and lets her granddaughter taste it. Then she takes out the egg and lets her granddaughter peel it and taste it. And then she ladles out some coffee for her granddaughter. And it’s then that she says, “Each of these things faced the same adversity: The boiling water. The carrot went in tough and strong, but the water made it soft and mushy. The egg was fragile with soft insides when it went in. It looked the same when it came out, but it isn’t. It’s now hardened on the inside. And then there’s the coffee,” she says. “The coffee went into the water, and it changed the water.”
Friends, adversity will come. Be the coffee. Change the water. ~
Originally posted to my FineLineBooks blog in February 2014. Special thanks to Father Nick of Calvary Episcopal Church in Rochester, Minnesota, for putting this story into one of his famous quick-and-to-the-point sermons. It’s been years since I heard it and I think about it almost every single day.
