A FABLE
The Lion and the Mouse
in which a small kindness comes back
· · ·
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In a great hot land far away, in the shade of a great tree, there slept a lion.

A small mouse, who was running across the grass without looking very carefully, ran straight onto the lion's paw, and then up the lion's back, and then onto the lion's nose.

The lion woke up. He caught the mouse in one paw. He held the mouse very gently, the way lions can, when they choose to.

"Please," said the mouse. He was shaking. "Please do not eat me. I am very small. I would not even be a proper mouthful. And someday, perhaps, I could do something for you in return."

The lion laughed. He laughed for a long time.

"You?" he said. "Do something for me? You are the size of my smallest claw. What could you possibly do for a lion?"

But the lion was a kind lion, on the whole. And he was not very hungry. So he opened his paw, and the mouse went away, very quickly, in the direction of home.

A long time later, on a different day, the lion was walking through the wood when he stepped into a hunter's trap. A great rope net came down from the tree. The lion was caught. He thrashed and roared and tried to bite the ropes. The ropes did not break. The hunters were coming.

The mouse heard the lion roaring. He came running through the grass.

"Hold still," said the mouse.

He began to chew. He chewed at one rope. He chewed at another. His small sharp teeth went through the ropes the way the lion's great teeth could not. One rope. Two ropes. Three.

The lion was free.

He looked down at the mouse. The mouse looked up at the lion.

"I told you," said the mouse, "that someday, perhaps, I could do something for you in return."

The lion did not laugh this time. He bowed his great head, very slowly, to the smallest creature in the wood.

A long time after Aesop,
Jesus said something to a crowd
about giving and getting back.
Would you like to hear it?
A TEACHING OF JESUS

The lion gave the mouse his life. He did it carelessly. He laughed when he did it. He did not expect to ever see the mouse again, and he did not expect anything in return.

But the small kindness came back to him in a way he could not have planned. The mouse was the only creature in the wood whose teeth were small enough and sharp enough to chew through the ropes.

Jesus once said that whatever you give will come back to you, in the same measure. He did not promise that it would come back the same day. He did not promise that it would come back from the same person. He just said it would come back.

Sometimes the smallest creature you ever spared is the only one who can save you.

What small kindness did you do once, that you have forgotten about?
Where might it have gone?

LUKE 6:38
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· · ·
"I told you that someday, perhaps, I could do something for you in return."
When I was twenty-five, I worked at a small print shop. There was a kid who came in to deliver papers, about fourteen years old. He was always cold. I bought him a coat one winter. It was forty dollars. I did not think about it much. I did not know him. I just bought him a coat. I forgot about it for forty years. Last year, my wife went into the hospital. The bills were a mess. I did not know what to do. The man who runs my insurance, who I have only ever met by phone, called me one evening. He said, "Mr. Davis, I want to handle this for you personally. You bought me a coat in 1981. I never forgot." I had not recognized his voice. I had not remembered his name. He had remembered mine for forty years.
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, Tom, 67, Tucson
❦
there is another story about somebody very small
who showed up in a storm,
with crackers and tea and a flashlight,
for somebody much larger
who needed him. his name was Piglet.
A FABLE BY AESOP