So that first part of this parable was a little long and the title confused some people too. But bear with me, I'm a rookie parable writer and this is only the second of *three* parts. If its any consulation, the title should make sense in part 3 (I hope). This second parable is actually a prequel to the first. So perhaps the knowledge of the Kingdom of God is like a woman and her husband who decided to sell all they had to open a tavern the center of the town that they lived in. Both of them had a passion for food and wanted nothing more than to share that passion with other people. Over the course of their life, they had been to many other taverns and eaten many different types of food. After frequenting the different taverns around town for quite a while they had decided they wanted to try to open their own. They went out into the town and scoped out prime locations for the tavern. They eventually found a store front for sale right in the town square. It was expensive and they'd have to sell their house to be able to buy it, but they were passionate about opening up this tavern. They were willing to make sacrifices to see their passion through. With the store front bought, they put together a very thoughtful business plan for the first couple years. They bought furniture and a sign for the front with the money they had left over. And, oh yea, who could forget about the food?! They went out to the market and stocked the shelves with all they would need. One of the last things they did was pick up a couple cookbooks and made a menu based of off them. Their of them had actually cooked much since they went out all the time to eat. But they had eaten enough food, been to enough tavern, and most importantly, they were passionate about opening up their tavern - how could they go wrong?!
The day finally came when it was time to open the tavern for business. It was a Monday, and the town square was bustling with workers in search of a lunchtime meal. So the woman opened up the doors and announced to the people in the square that they were open! One man that was walking by shrugged his shoulders and strolled in, sitting down at a table by the front window.
"Our first customer?!" The woman thought to herself as she walked up to his table. She greeted the man and took his order, hurrying back to her husband in the kitchen to relay the message to him. The man grabbed his trusty cookbook, found the recipe, looked at it for a while, and then began to busily put the meal together. After several minutes, the man slide the meal onto a plate and announced to his wife that it was ready. She grabbed the plate and proudly brought it over to their first customer.
"You are our first customer," she stated proudly as she set the plate down in front of him. She waited patiently as he took his first bite hoping for a favorable response. Instead, the man's face grimaced as he chewed on the food and gulped it down. "This is horrible! I've never tasted food this bland in my life," the man exclaimed. The woman was taken quite by surprise at his response. "That was a little rude, sir, don't you think," said the woman. "Hardly ma'am, in fact I think I was being polite," he stated rather matter-of-factly as he got up and walked out of the tavern.
The woman was discourage by the customer's response but she finally reasoned to herself that he was just being rude. Just then, another customer came through the door. With renewed hope, she strode over to the man and took his order. Unfortunately, the response was the same. Disgusted at the taste of the food, this man also left the tavern without paying. "What is going on," the woman thought to herself, "We have a great tavern and only the finest ingredients. It must be my husband, he's just a horrible cook!" Resolved in her mind that this was the case, she stormed into the kitchen, ripped the spatula from her husband's hand, and sent him out to take orders. Unfortunately, this didn't help any. The next woman that walked in the tavern left as soon as she tasted her food, same as the first two customers.
The day proceeded like this till it was finally closing time and they had only made a few very small sales. "This is horrible! At first I just thought the customers were being rude. Then I just thought that you were a horrible cook," the woman said to her husband, "but now I'm beginning to think that to food that we bought at the market must be bad!" The next day, the couple angrily returned all of the food they had bought and got new batches of everything. Sadly, this had no effect. Customers continued to leave their tavern unsatisfied until the customers didn't come at all. After just a month, the couple was forced to close the tavern. They were devastated by the failure of the tavern and continued to be at a lose for why the customers had been so dissatisfied. Let s/he who has ears hear this, my second story.
This is the end of the second parable. The next posting will be an interpretation of them. Until then, post your thoughts on the stories. What does the 'food' represent? What do you think these stories are trying to say? All of this, including the title, will hopefully make more sense after the next post.
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