THE SPOON
In a self-service store, an old lady ordered soup. At the time of taking a seat on one of the many tables in the place, she realized that she had forgotten the spoon. She left her bowl on the table, and went to fetch a spoon. A sad surprise awaited her on returning to her soup. Sitting before her bowl, a stranger was just taking the first spoonful from the soup. “That’ why he’s rather fat, this stranger,” thought the lady. ” She sat down, shifted the bowl and said in a gentle voice: “Do you mind?”
Having said so, she digs her spoon in the soup. But the stranger shifts the bowl to the middle of the table and takes a spoonful from the soup again. In face of such behaviour, the lady did not dare to challenge him and she shared the soup with the stranger. When the soup was finished, the man fetched the plate of fried potatoes placed on the middle of the table. He invites his ‘neighbour’ to help herself: as with the soup, now the potatoes were also shared. The stranger then left the table with a big “thank you” to the lady.
She also thought it was time to leave. She looked for her handbag which she had hanged on the back of her chair. But the bag was gone. The lady cried: “It’s the man!” Then she looked around the place. There it was: the handbag was hanging at the back of a chair, at a table very near to where she was. In front of the empty chair, there was the bowl of soup with smoke still coming out, and a side-plate with no spoon. Then it was not the stranger who took her soup: it was the lady who sat at the wrong table and ate half of his soup. The man, however, had left her with a big “thank you!”
Christ taught us not to judge others. – Saint George Preca