As always, my daughter and I have been steadily reading fairy tales. I don’t have the time to write on every story we read, especially the short ones, as in Grimm’s, but I found this one interesting enough to do so.
‘Clever’ Alice, as her family calls her, has a prospective husband courting her. But before he marries her he wants certain knowledge that she is of the ‘prudent’ sort. He certainly receives indisputable proof of this.
As her future groom, Hans (you can never go wrong with that name), visits for dinner, Clever Alice heads down to the cellar to fetch some beer. As she drains the beer from the spicket, however, she notices a hatchet that has been left by the builders and is sticking out of the ceiling.
The sight of this hatchet causes Clever Alice a slight nervous breakdown as she fears that in the future said tool might fall from the ceiling and smite her future child as he, like her, stands to fetch beer.
One by one the servants, then the mother and father, come to see what is taking Clever Alice so long, only to be caught up in her weeping for the future. It’s really quite funny – the thought of each of these people joining in mourning for a child that has not even been conceived who might die by a hatchet falling from the sky.
But Clever Alice certainly shows foresight and prudence.
And so Hans marries her, and she remains prudent. She plans ahead, bringing pottage with her to the fields in case she gets hungry. She plans a nap so that she will not be tired. And the end result is…
Well, I won’t give that away, in case you haven’t read it. But let me comment briefly.
The lesson I gained from this tale is simple – prudence, while a good thing, doesn’t guarantee a good result. Thinking, and planning, for the future are beneficial, but they can certainly be overdone. There is a vision of the future that is paralyzing (i.e. seeing the future as mostly full of objects that might injure you or yours).
The future, from a Christian’s perspective, certainly holds doom – or at least Doom’s Day. But some would see the future as only doom. Such believe that every acts is a sign of future catastrophe. Bad laws equal hatchets that may some day fall out of the ceiling. Elections equal hammers that may fall on our heads. A black cat or a broken mirror point to future calamity.
But no matter the possibilities and no matter the signs. No matter the bowls of wrath, or trumpets of judgment, the Apostle John sees, in the end, a new heaven and a new earth wherein righteousness dwell.
Yes the hatchet may fall upon someone’s head. But it has already fallen on the head of the Christ. So then even if it does fall on mine he has already taken the blow for me that I may have life – and a future.
And with this knowledge in hand I must work harder than all (unlike the slothful, yet clever, Alice), for his grace to me is not in vain. Prudence can lead a person to laziness (or at least it does in the story). But a future of grace and renewal leads us to labor on with zeal in hope.
Fear of the future shouldn’t paralyze us, and it doesn’t really make us all that prudent, at least not in the positive sense. Fear of the future should really make us optimistic, if anything, because we know who holds the hatchet in his hand, and who has shed his own blood for us.
Just some thoughts…
