Fr. Jose Kaimlett At the foot of a cliff in the Colorado primeval forest lie the remains of a gigantic tree. Scientists say that it had stood there for more than 400 years. It had been a sapling when Columbus discovered San Salvador. It was not even half-grown when the Pilgrim Fathers settled at Plymouth Rock. In its life time it had been struck by lightning 14 times; over the centuries numerous land slides and storms had assaulted it. But it bravely withstood them all. Finally the tree was attacked by an army of white ants or termites. They ate their way through its bark and gradually destroyed the tree from the inside by eating it hollow.
_ Dale Carnegie
This giant of the forest, which the ravages of centuries could not destroy, which lightning could not shatter, finally collapsed under the onslaught of white ants, which are so small that a person can crush one to death between his fingers. Unless one is careful, even a very healthy person can be conquered by the seemingly small germs and viruses; so too the little defects, which we often do not take into account, can like the white ants in this story, by and by completely destroy our us. Don’t Underestimate the Little Dangers – the so-called ‘venial sins’.
