I heard a story several years ago where a young man had just become king and he wanted to be absolutely sure that he managed the affairs of his kingdom properly. So he sent out his wise men on a quest to find out all the wisdom of the world. (If you are a woman remember this was before the Women’s Rights Movement, so please get over it.)
So about a year later all the wise men came back with scrolls and scrolls of information and the king asked them to transfer everything onto one scroll. They did, and boy, was it a long and heavy scroll! It took three of them just to carry the scroll into the king’s throne room. When he saw it, he said, “No, no; this won’t do; it is WAY too much information to know. Condense it for me.”
Three months later they came back with the abridged version, all the wisdom of the world fitting neatly on one small scroll. They began to read it to the king, but again he complained, “No. Too much. Make it even smaller. Leave out any wisdom that isn’t absolutely necessary.
A month later they came back to the king with a very small scroll where all the writing fit on just one page. But still, the young king was not satisfied. “Now reduce this wisdom down into one sentence. I want one sentence to live my entire life by so that I can govern my entire kingdom using its guiding principle.”
So the wise men thought and thought and after much deliberation and argument amongst themselves they finally decided on the one sentence that contained the wisdom of the ages. They happily entered the king’s presence the next day and the wisest of them read to the king the one sentence that represented the words of wisdom he so sought after:
“There’s NO free lunch.
Happily, the young king, shouted and jumped for joy. “That’s it!” he cried. “This principle is what I am going to do all of my governing by.” Immediately, he recognized faults in his own life, where he was living leisurely when even a king should be working to improve himself and his kingdom. He called all of his counselors and the palace staff, including the guards into his chambers and explained that from now on that everyone would pull their fair share and work as hard as they could to improve the kingdom.
He made a proclamation and sent it out to all the royal subjects, proclaiming “There’s No Free Lunch” and everyone was to do their fair share if they wanted to prosper. And for those who were too sick or frail to work, they were to be helped by others, but never to forget that what they shared was the result of hard work by someone else and the least they could do was be thankful for the bounty given to them by the generosity of others.
Soon, everyone’s attitude changed and the entire kingdom became prosperous and successful. And in the process, everyone became kind and thankful.
What a story! Too bad our elected officials don’t think like this young king more often. But then again, this is not a political rant. I just wanted to tell the story about how someone was able to condense all the wisdom of the world into four short words.
Once when Jesus was asked by someone what was the most important commandments, he responded:
“You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.’ 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 A second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40 The entire law and all the demands of the prophets are based on these two commandments.”
(Matthew 22: 37-40 NLT)
So in about three or so sentences, Jesus summed up the entire Old Testament, which consists of over 900 chapters, 23,000+ verses, and in excess of 600,000 words.
No, Jesus didn’t condense the wisdom of the world to four words like the young king in our story, but Jesus happens to be THE king of the entire universe, so I think I will trust his abridged version of wisdom instead.
