There is a little story that is currently popular on the blogosphere and it goes like this…

A mouse looked through the crack in the wall to see the farmer and his wife open a package.

What food might this contain?” the mouse wondered. He was devastated to discover it was a mousetrap.

Retreating to the farmyard, the mouse proclaimed the warning. “There is a mousetrap in the house! There is a mousetrap in the house!”

The chicken clucked and scratched, raised her head and said, “Mr. Mouse, I can tell this is a grave concern to you, but it is of no consequence to me. I cannot be bothered by it.”

The mouse turned to the pig and told him, “There is a mousetrap in the house! There is a mousetrap in the house!” The pig sympathized, but said, “I am so very sorry, Mr. Mouse, but there is nothing I can do about it but pray. Be assured you are in my prayers.”

The mouse turned to the cow and said “There is a mousetrap in the house! There is a mousetrap in the house!” The cow said, “Wow, Mr. Mouse. I’m sorry for you, but it’s no skin off my nose.”

So, the mouse returned to the house, head down and dejected, to face the farmer’s mousetrap alone.

That very night a sound was heard throughout the house — like the sound of a mousetrap catching its prey. The farmer’s wife rushed to see what was caught. In the darkness, she did not see it was a venomous snake whose tail the trap had caught. The snake bit the farmer’s wife. The farmer rushed her to the hospital, and she returned home with a fever.

Everyone knows you treat a fever with fresh chicken soup, so the farmer took his hatchet to the farmyard for the soup’s main ingredient.

But his wife’s sickness continued, so friends and neighbors came to sit with her around the clock. To feed them, the farmer butchered the pig.

The farmer’s wife did not get well; she died. So many people came for her funeral that the farmer had the cow slaughtered to provide enough meat for all of them.

The mouse looked upon it all from his crack in the wall with great sadness.

The next time you hear someone is facing a problem and think it doesn’t concern you, remember — when one of us is threatened, we are all at risk. We are all involved in this journey called life. We must keep an eye out for one another and make an extra effort to encourage and help one another.

Where I first came across this little story (the author said to be unknown, by the way) it was followed by a prayer which we were encouraged to pray. That simply highlighted my first reaction to the story. Meant as a gem of wisdom, the story carried a wrongful assumption which undermined the message it was intended to impart.

Do you see what I see?

The chicken and the cow may have done nothing, but I thought the writer said that the pig prayed. That is nothing? Well, doesn’t that show how much value the story gives to the power of prayer! What’s the bet that, had the pig not prayed, it may have been the mouse and not the venomous snake that got caught in the trap? Maybe, because the pig prayed, the mouse got to out-live all his farmyard associates. Never underestimate the power of prayer.

But why bother with the prayer that followed if you went along with the story as it is written?