Sam was tinkering with the engine when John came running up with a batch of the “natives” right behind him. “We need to get out of here NOW!” John said, and after throwing the landing kit inside the cabin the two of them made low orbit a short time later, lifting off to the sound of rocks and spears clanging on the metal plates of their capsule as they left dirt side.

“What in the world happened?” asked Sam, “we never had any trouble with those guys before!” “Well”, explained John, “I have no idea. They just suddenly went crazy!”

Has something like that ever happened to you? Someone gets upset, or hurt, or angry because you said or did something and you are left mystified what exactly you did wrong? Maybe things aren’t quite as they appear. I remember once a friend telling me how he’d hurt his wife’s feelings. They had spent the day with her parents and her father kept running her down, complaining what a lousy cook she was, slovenly homemaker, and so on. As they drove home later that day his wife was very quiet. Finally he realized she was angry at him! And he had never said a word! “But you didn’t defend me!” she said – against her own father! My friend said it never happened again… but on with today’s story…

Apparently, according to John, the “martians” as Sam and John referred to them because of their short size and bold green skin color, had taken John on a tour of their city. They eventually led him into their temple, their most holy of holy places, where on a pedestal sat a glowing blue gem. Suddenly they became very upset and tried to tear him apart! John was shocked because up until then they had been peaceful, friendly, and even generous doing all sorts of manual labor for the explorers as well as providing them with all the information they needed on their history, culture, and way of life. They had never shown even the slightest hostility even among themselves and seemed to go to great lengths to be polite and solve any problems peacefully. It was as if they had all suddenly gone insane! John somehow managed to brush them off and escape to the roof, swing down, and after a long chase with him running for his life he’d reached the ship first and got out of there before they could close the distance.

“Did you say something to antagonize them?” Sam asked. “What was the last thing that happened?” “It was just like I told you” pleaded John, “They showed me this blue stone and then they went nuts!”

Sometimes we can be so self-absorbed or self-important that we tromp all over the hearts of others. Sometimes we think if people have a problem with us they should just “get over it” and have no true regard for them. When we have so many blessings, we lose value of each individual one. But if we only had one, why, it would mean the whole world to us. To the poor man $5 is a day’s meal, but to a rich man it’s a shoeshine. It’s a terrible thing to “steal” the joy from someone’s heart, by expressing a careless thought that makes them feel less of a person than we delude ourselves into thinking we are…

“Wow, I sure would have liked to have seen that stone for myself” said Sam. To which John casually pulled it from his pocket with a disinterested look on is face and replied, “Oh, that silly thing? Here it is.”

Randy