A very close friend of mine shared the following parable with me. I’ve taken some liberties and paraphrased some parts and share my interpretation of it. With his permission, I am sharing it here.

A small community needs to accomplish a task which will result in life or death for its survival. They have limited resources to draw on to accomplish the task. After much debate it is determined that there are two options.

Option A and option B
They take a vote. 51% vote for A and 49% vote for B. Because the majority is usually right they all decide to accomplish the task with option A.

In the 1st scenario the minority group decides they will go along but if it doesn’t work blame those in the majority.

In the 2nd scenario; everyone, after spending all their money and talent to accomplish the task and after putting all of their effort into that task (Both the majority and minority) option A doesn’t work.

There is much distress and heartache. The group that voted for option B has a number of ways they can respond to the dilemma. We’ll highlight two here. They could hold resentment in their hearts and say “you should have listened to us because we were right” or they could have said well geez that is really unfortunate. What are we going to do?

In the 1st scenario where they resented and started to cause strife and contention the community falls apart. They go their way always angry at what transpired and with vitriol toward the other group because they just didn’t listen.

In the 2nd scenario they found themselves together in a desperate situation but because they obeyed the Lord and His commands to not dispute and love each other regardless of the outcome, they decided to take it to the Lord.

In the Lords economy neither A or B were going to work. They would have to rely on the merits of the Lord.

In the 1st scenario the group didn’t mutually do what was required and lay down their disputes and arguments. Those who chose to contend became laws unto themselves to kick against the pricks and forever mull over others bad decisions that affected them so terribly. Blaming others into eternity.

In the 2nd scenario the group humbled themselves and called upon the Lord for His blessing and witnessed a miracle because the Lord had another option awaiting that only He could perform. That group by their diligence and obedience called down the blessings of heaven which obedience brought the blessing it was tied to. They all had their testimonies strengthened and were able to witness unspeakable things.

My dear friend pointed out to me that instead of being about the outcome of the situation it was more about the process and how they treated each other.