I’ve seriously been loving my parables. I really enjoy re-reading The Richest Man in Babylon and now I’ve nearly finished The Alchemist. They must be so tough to write well, but I feel like it’s such a fantastic way to give advice through story telling.

My latest revelation comes from reading The Alchemist this morning:

“Maybe God created the desert so that man can appreciate the date trees”.

Out of context, this probably sounds a little confusing. At this point in the story, a young Spanish shepherd had sold his flock of sheep and moved to Egypt. He was in search of treasure near the pyramids, but not long after he arrived at the port, he was robbed of all of his gold and was left with nothing. He worked and saved money and eventually joined a caravan to rode a camel towards the pyramids. They had spent days and then weeks riding through the hot, dry desert. Then one day, just as the sun rose, the group finally caught a glimpse of the oasis. “After weeks of yellow sand and blue sky, they finally saw the green of the date palms”.

Like most parables, the lesson here is something deeper than the beauty of date palms. I myself have never seen what a date tree looks like, but I know this is simply a metaphor for our lives. The ‘desert’ are the tough times, and the ‘date trees’ are the moments of happiness. If life was all date trees, we’d become complacent and we’d lose sight of how good our lives really were. Sometimes we might need to suffer a few setbacks in order to become truly grateful for what we have in life.

So maybe God created the desert so that man can appreciate the date trees. And maybe God created the tough, sad moments so that we can appreciate the good times in life.