Echo

Once there was a boy who went to visit his grandfather in the high mountains. Sometimes his grandfather was too busy to pay attention to him, and the boy didn’t like that. One day he stood outside and declared in a loud voice, “I hate it here!” To his amazement, he heard a voice coming back, “I hate it here!”

The boy ran to tell his grandfather of the voice he had heard. The wise old man laughed. “Old echo has been my friend for many years,” he said. “He will be your friend too. But” – he looked hard at his grandson, before continuing – “Be very careful what you say to him if you want him to stay friendly.”

For a long time, the boy had fun with his new ‘friend.’ He had a great time calling out and getting answers to his own words, sometimes multiplied many times.

               “Hello.”

               “Hello-o-o-o

               “How are you-u-u?”

               “Are you friendly?”

               “Friendly-y-y

But after a while the boy got tired of hearing back just what he had said. One day he muttered, “You’re nothing but an echo. “He shook his fist and yelled, “Dummy!”

Immediately the clear mountain air was filled with an echo of his powerful yell: “Dummy-y-y”

The boy remembered what his grandfather had said about the way he treated the echo. He couldn’t help laughing and he called back, “OK, you win.”

               This time the echo obligingly answered, “You win-n-n.”

Life and family and friends have a way of giving back just about everything we give out. If we live the way Jesus wants us too and model our lives after Him, we can be pretty sure people will treat us a lot better than if we stand around yelling, “Dummy!” at them. Just like the echo, they’ll probably yell it right back. It’s called Jesus’ golden rule, “Do to others what you would like them to do to you.”