taken from Islamic Thinking
A man was exploring caves by the seashore. In one
of the caves he found a canvas bag with a bunch of hardened clay balls.
It was like someone had rolled clay balls and left them out in the sun
to bake. They didn’t look like much, but they intrigued the man so he
took the bag out of the cave with him.
As he strolled along the beach, he would throw the
clay balls one at a time out into the ocean as far as he could. He
thought little about it until he dropped one of the balls and it cracked
open on a rock. Inside was a beautiful, precious stone.
Excited the man started breaking open the remaining clay balls. Each contained a similar treasure.
He found thousands of pounds worth of jewels in the
20 or so clay balls he had left. Then it struck him. He had been on the
beach a long time. He had thrown maybe 50 or 60 of the clay balls with
their hidden treasure into the ocean waves. Instead of thousands of
dollars in treasure, he could have taken home tens of thousands, but he
just threw it away.
It’s like that with people. We look at someone,
maybe even ourselves, and we see the external clay vessel. It doesn’t
look like much from the outside. It isn’t always beautiful or sparkling
so we discount it. We see that person as less important than someone
more beautiful or stylish or well known or wealthy. But we have not
taken the time to find the treasure hidden inside that person by Allah
SWT.
There is a treasure in each and every one of us. If
we take the time to get to know that person, and if we ask Allah SWT to
show us that person the way He sees them, then the clay begins to peel
away and the brilliant gem begins to shine forth.
May we not come to the end of our lives
and find out that we have thrown away a fortune in friendships because
the gems were hidden in bits of clay.
May we see the people in our world as Allah SWT sees them.
