The Quest for Health

One man’s quest for a purpose to life, his quest for the truth, started with a barrel of apples.

He says: “I used to wonder why a rotten apple, placed in a barrel of sound apples, would make the sound apples rotten, while a sound apple placed in a barrel of rotten apples, would not make all rotten apples sound.”

I also wondered why a man infected with smallpox, when turned loose in a gathering of sound and healthy people would, by his mere presence, make many of the healthy people sick, while a sound man walking through a hospital of sick people would not, by his mere presence, make the sick people well.

However, one day I stopped wondering and examined the so-called sound apple, and I found it was not sound. Oh, I knew the grocer would say I was wrong, that he could see no defect. He might even sue me for lying if I persisted in spreading the rumor that he was selling apples that were not perfect. But if he persisted and pressed me for proof, I would prove it.

I would ask him to look beyond the apple to the stem. There in the most vital, the most crucial spot of all, he would find that the apple had been torn away from its parent vine; it had been hopelessly separated from its source of life, and thus would eventually rot.

The man went to discover one of the truest facts of life, that nothing – whether it is fruit or vegetable or man himself – when separated from its source of life, is sound or safe.

We are also like that apple because we are all separated from our source of life; we are separated from God. We need to re-hook ourselves to our life support system; otherwise we too will perish.