a lesson in acceptance

After this last post, confessing my short comings, I feel the need to share this story (which I learned long before coming here)

There were once two angels—a head angel and his apprentice—walking through a town. As the night began to fall, the two, disguised as traveling men, knocked at the door of a very great and rich house. The owner of the house came to the door, and the angels asked the man for food and shelter for the night. After trying to turn them away, the persistent angels were granted entry, allowed to sleep in the damp basement for the night, and given bread and water after being roused early to start again on their way.
While they were in the basement, the head angel saw a crack in the wall of the house, and to the apprentice’s surprised, fixed the crack.

Continuing to walk, as night began to fall the next day, they angels came to a small, poor farmhouse. They approached the door, which opened before they even knocked. The owners, an elderly couple, saw the angels as weary travelers and welcomed them into their home. Although they were extremely poor—they had only one cow!—, the couple shared the best of what they had with their guests, and that night, they insisted the angels sleep on the one bed in the house, while they themselves slept on the floor. The next morning, after having slept in and been given a meager but generous breakfast, the angels set to leave. The apprentice looked out the window, and saw the couple in their field, crying because during the night their one cow had died.

Later that day, the two angels were walking again. The apprentice turned to his master and, exasperated, demanded that what had happened be explained.
“In the home of the rich, selfish man, you fixed—actually fixed!!—his wall!” the apprentice accused, “and yet this couple who have nothing and yet offered us everything, you sat by as their one cow died?!”

Unsurprised, the head angel calmly looked at his pupil. “In the rich man’s home, he kept his gold in an unknown hole in the wall. The crack I sealed was the way in which it was accessed. As for the cow—last night, I was awake when the angel of death came to the farm. But you don’t realize, the angel came for the famer’s wife! I convinced him to be appeased with the cow in her stead.”

We may all sometimes loose our cows, but what we don’t see is what was saved in its place.