Playing with Parables

Four Acorns

There were once four acorns. They were all friends, for they had grown up together on the same branch of a mighty old oak tree – an oak tree that had stood solidly at the edge of a farm field for more than a century. The old oak was a wonderful place for acorns to develop and the four acorns loved their home there. However, one day, everything changed. The four acorns all dropped to the ground when a squirrel nibbled off the branch that had been holding held them up. Down, down they fell. Upon hitting the ground, their adventure continued, for the four acorns separated from the branch and from one another, each settling in different places.

The first acorn happened to roll into the middle of the path at the edge of the field where he was totally exposed and visible. It didn’t take the squirrel that had nibbled off the branch in the first place long to see the first acorn, to descend the tree, and to devour him.

The second acorn landed in a much different place. She bounced onto a rock pile and rolled down inside it. Within the pile she was safe from the squirrel and other animals that might wish to eat her. But sadly, she was lodged in a place where she got no sun, no water, and no dirt. Although she sprouted and tried to grow the following spring, she found it impossible to do so, and she dried up and died.

The third acorn fared a little better. He rolled into a thorny thicket. There, he, like the second acorn, found protection from the squirrel and other animals who would have loved to eat him. Shaded from the direct sun, the third acorn eventually sprouted and grew into a little oak tree – quickly at first. Yet, the thicket was so dense and thick – so full of others who were vying for the same water, the same nutrients, and the same sun, that the spindly little oak tree soon became stunted and overcome by the competing vegetation. He, too, died.

The fourth acorn landed in the tall grass near the base of the oak tree. She found some protection there; some moisture there; and some sun there – until the squirrel found her and carried her away, burying her in the fertile ground at the far corner of the field. There the fourth acorn remained for the winter. The squirrel never returned for her, for the farmer who owned the field had shot the squirrel and enjoyed a pot of squirrel stew on a cool autumn evening. Left alone in the moist fertile soil, the fourth acorn sprouted in the spring, and grew and grew and grew and grew. Years came and went, and the acorn was transformed into a new landmark at the edge of the field – a landmark enjoyed by the farmer’s son and even by the farmer's granddaughter, both of whom continued to till the good soil of the adjacent field for many years. And the mighty oak tree, which the fourth acorn had become, bore thousands upon thousands of new acorns throughout the many years of her long life – some of which fell and sprouted, some of which fell and were eaten, and some of which fell and died, for such is the circle of life.

T.T.S.