Aesop’s Fables Month: The Bundle of Sticks 🪾
YahShua (Jesus) gave His followers a clear, unmistakable marker by which the world would recognize His grace:
“By this everyone will know that you are My disciples, if you love one another.”
— John 13:35 (B.S.B.)
I recently spent a day with my brother and got to hear some background stories that inspired his ministry and some of his song lyrics. Between the testimonies of both him and my sister-in-law, I found my heart going out to the brokenness created in them by broken and unhealed people on their paths.
Maybe my heart grabs this because of the hurts I’ve experienced when I was an innocent victim. I don’t necessarily agree with the statement that hurt people hurt other people since knowing how it feels to be a victim has kept me from intentionally hurting others. Still, I can see how unhealed broken people can cause pain in others when they lash out as a method of self-defense or self-protection.
On top of pondering all these stories, today’s news took me to the protests in Spain where disconnected property buyers (referred to as “Vulture Capitalists”) are displacing the elderly and families by raising their rents beyond what they can pay. While I’m pro-capitalism for hard-working people with big dreams, I’m not at all on the side of greedy people who take whatever they want just because they can afford it. And it’s easy to see how allowing people to purchase properties at a distance without being a fellow countryman or neighbor inspires exactly that type of greed.
The distance between people, especially when distance becomes spiritual or emotional, causes them to stop being neighborly in their hearts. If they are physically distant, it’s even easier because they cannot see the effects of their amoral behaviors against real people with real needs.
But even without physical distance, humans who separate themselves from others by thinking they don’t need to respect every other person in their sphere of influence make a lot of decisions that deliver hurts well beyond those with whom they interact directly. There are too many scenarios to demonstrate this, like generations of family members grieving someone killed because a driver decided their own night out mattered more than human life, but I would urge people to look more carefully at how they affect others than at how others affect them.
The Classic Fable Retold: The Bundle of Sticks (Perry 44)
An aging father had a family of sons who were constantly quarreling and bickering among themselves. Despite all his warnings, they refused to live in peace, their divisions making them weak and vulnerable.
Weary of their strife, the father tied a bundle of sticks tightly together with a cord. Calling his sons to him, he handed the bundle to the eldest and told him to break it. The son strained with all his might, but try as he might, he could not crack the bundle.
One by one, the other sons tried and failed as well. Then the father untied the bundle, handed each son a single stick, and told them to snap it. In an instant, every single stick was easily broken in half.
“My sons,” the father said gently, “if you keep together and help one another, you are as unbreakable as this bundle. But if you separate, quarrel, and isolate yourselves from one another, you will become as fragile as these broken twigs.”
The Strength of a Three-Fold Cord
When people isolate themselves—whether through greed, a lack of empathy, or the cold calculation of treating human lives as commodities—they leave a wake of brokenness. But God has called us to something entirely different.
“Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves. A cord of three strands is not quickly broken.”
— Ecclesiastes 4:12 (B.S.B.)
May we choose to look out for our neighbors, to bear one another’s burdens, and to stand unified in the love of Christ rather than drifting apart in self-absorbed isolation!
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