THE BROKEN BRANCH.
A LITTLE branch on an apple-tree was heavy with blossoms and young fruit, and seemed as though it would bear a great many apples. It was the most promising branch in all the tree.
But one stormy night, being tired of tossing to and fro with the wind, it grew proud and angry, and said, "Why should I hang here among all these barren branches, moving when they move, and resting when they rest?
They have hardly any fruit themselves, and they hide my fruit. And what do I want with the great useless trunk below that has no fruit upon it? I should like to come down and grow by myself on the lawn, that all people might see me."
No sooner were these words uttered, than a violent gush of wind, whirling through the tree, snapped off the discontented branch and dashed it to the ground. A little boy finding it there early next morning, stuck it up in the lawn for fun.
"This is capital," thought the branch to itself; "now I shall take root and grow up by myself to be a famous tree."
But, alas! When the day grew toward noon, the sun shone with all its heat on the poor branch, and sent a pain right through it from one end to the other, spreading even to every little twig and leaf and blossom.
Now, when it was too late, the poor branch cried out, "Ah, how I wish I had remained on the old trunk! Now I begin to miss the sap and food that the trunk used to send up to me. I am dying with thirst, and all my body is scorching to death."
Just then the master of the garden passed by, and he said to the gardener, "What a pity that fine branch has fallen! Clear it off the lawn at once, and chop it up for firewood."
Every moment in our lives Jesus is helping us to be good. As the trunk gives sap to the branches, so Jesus gives us help to be good. But if we will not trust in him and pray to him, but go away from him and trust in ourselves, we lose the strength that he gives us, and, like the broken branch, we make ourselves fit for nothing but to be destroyed.
Remember that one branch cannot separate itself from the other branches.
Your brothers and sisters and friends are all branches in the tree of Jesus.
If you try to separate yourself from them and to think only of pleasing yourself, you are like the foolish broken branch.
Parables for Children