Thin Soup

A king had two servants.  He told the first servant to do something.  The servant did it and was promoted.  He told the second servant to do something.   The servant did not do it and was fired.

The servant who was promoted lived very, very well in the king’s service and continued to obey the king and be promoted.  One day, however, his thoughts turned to the servant who had disobeyed the king and been fired.  So he went to visit him.

He arrived at the house where the man used to live, but he was no longer there.  A neighbor said he had sold the house and moved to a much smaller one.

When the servant arrived at the place where the second servant now lived, he realized that “house” was too kind a word.  It was a hovel.  The first servant knocked on the door, and a voice said, “Come in.”

The second servant was sitting on a dirt floor and was eating a very, very thin soup.

The servant who had been promoted smiled. “If you had learned to obey the king, you would not have to eat that thin soup,” he said.

The servant who had been fired said, “If you had learned how to eat thin soup, you would not have to obey the king!”

This story is a parable of sorts told by John Shea in his 1996 book “The Legend of the Bells and Other Tales: Stories of the Human Spirit.”  It reminds us that during Lent we should ask which king will we choose to follow. 

Which king will we obey?   The one who might force us to compromise our integrity for material things that we believe we cannot live without?  Or the one that asks us to leave material things behind by being faithful to the Gospel, by sacrificing, and by choosing the way of the King we call our Christ?    

Lent is the time for us to eat thin soup.

Deacon David Pierce