Everything good has good reason

The story is told of an old time king and his adviser.

The adviser was known for his wisdom and strikingly positive attitude. No mater what happened, the adviser would say, “May something good come from it!”

One day, the kind returned to his castle with a bleeding hand; he had lost a finger while hunting in the forest. In pain, he showed his hand to his adviser, who simply said, “May something good come from it!” Angry at his adviser’s comment, the king shouted, “What good can come from losing my finger? Jail him!” to which the adviser simply said, “May something good come from it!”

The king appointed a new adviser, who became the second most important person in the kingdom. Later, the king’s armies were defeated by a neighboring kingdom. The tradition was that the winner would offer the most important person in the defeated kingdom as a sacrifice to the gods. However, the king was missing a finger and the triumphant enemy king declared, “I will not offer any incomplete sacrifice to the gods. Find the adviser, he will do!” And so the lives of the king and his former adviser were saved- due to events that seemed terrible when they happened.

How many of us have laid perfect plans only to see them altered or ruined by some unexpected, unwelcomed event? And how many of us change our minds and become grateful when the results of such events prove favorable?

Just because we can’t see the future, a positive outcome for an inexplicable event doesn’t make the gift to enjoy or a lesson to learn. Or as the saying goes, “May something good come from it!”

By:

Naima Bouhraoua
The Arabian Sun News

Dhahran, Saudi Aramco