I Thank Thee Lord!

According to an ancient fable, there once lived in a small village a man whose body was so twisted and his face so disfigured the townspeople laughed at him, avoided him — the children teased him, the dogs barked at him. And the man became so embittered that he left the village where he had been born and went deep into the forest, where he lived alone …

There, in the deep forest he found a measure of comfort: in the beauty of sunrises and sunsets and the soft sighing of the breeze in the trees and the sweet songs of the birds in the air. Still, the bitterness only softened. It did not go away.

One day, a visitor came into the hermit’s hut. As they sat down together for a simple meal, the hermit asked the visitor to offer a prayer, but the visitor said, “No, you are the master here, it is you who must say the blessing.” And so the hermit,…