The elephants are the largest living land animals. They have a regular
requirement of a large amount of water for their survival. The elephant drinks
by sucking up water into its large trunk, poking the open end into its mouth
and then blowing out to release the water into the mouth as a spray. A big
elephant bull may hold up to 10 litres of water in its trunk and may drink even
up to about 200 litres per day.
During a summer season, there was a severe drought in a forest. The
ponds, rivers and streams became dry. Animals ran frantically in search of
water. A bull elephant and his loving partner, a cow elephant were wearily
wandering about in search of some water in the scorching summer sun. They came
near the sandy bed of a dried up river. The bull elephant dug a deep hole and
found a little water. He lovingly invited his partner to drink the water. But
the loving cow elephant insisted that he may drink it alone, pretending that
she was not very thirsty. They argued for a while and finally decided to drink
the water together. They immersed their trunks into the water and pretended to
drink by raising their empty trunks to their mouths frequently, but the level
of water in the hole did not drop as none of them had really drawn the water
into their trunks to drink. They were enduring their thirst to let their
partner quench the thirst. Later they realized the strength of their mutual
love and embraced each other using their trunks. The animals in this story were
displaying true sacrificial love, the greatest form of love.
Sadhu Sundar Singh was passing
through a forest. He came to a place which was destroyed by a wild forest fire.
He could see charred plants, trees and animals everywhere. He saw a burnt bird
and touched it with a stick. The charred body of the large bird fell down and
then, from within the burnt body of the mother bird, some chicks came out. He
could trace the events easily. The mother bird had flown into the raging fire
in an attempt to save her chicks, but finding that she was unable to move them
away, she covered them completely in an earnest embrace and received the burns
on her own body, saving the chicks by sacrificing her own life in the fire. She
had obviously voluntarily offered her body to be burnt alive! He used to quote
this incident as an example to explain the virtues of sacrificial love.The greatest love a person can have for his
friends is to give his life for them.
.................................................................................................
© By Dr. Babu Philip,
Professor, Cochin University of Science & Technology, Fine Arts Avenue,
Kochi-682016, Kerala, India, Prof. Mrs. Rajamma Babu,
Former Professor, St. Dominic's College, Kanjirappally and Leo. S. John,
Maniparambil, Ooriyakunnath, Kunnumbhagom, Kanjirappally, Kottayam-686507, Kerala , India
For more moral stories,
parables and anecdotes for students kindly visit our web-site:
This is Story No. 96 in this site. Please click ‘Older Posts’ at the bottom of a page to
read previous stories and click 'Newer
Posts' at the bottom of a page to read newer stories in this site. Please
click on a word in the 'Story Themes'
to read stories on that theme.
No comments:
Post a Comment