Let’s be honest, Ronald’s house was rather squalid.
He really had no idea what lived under his sofa or dripped through his roof – and he didn’t much want to, either! Not his thing at all.
So when he was offered some expensive gold curtains to put up in his front window, he leapt at the chance.
‘How they will improve my house!’ he declared. ‘This is definitely the answer to my problems.’
And they did look very nice at first, causing favourable comment from passers-by.
But while the lush curtains made Ronald feel briefly proud, the house didn’t change.
It remained damp and dirty inside, and quite overrun by vermin. And Ronald did not lift a finger to sort things out, hoping the new gold hangings would do the trick.
‘I’ll be known as the man with gold curtains – a show-house, I think!’
But in this, he was mistaken: for because the house didn’t change, the curtains did. The house got no better, so the curtains got worse.
The damp rotted the fabric; dust settled layer by layer, dimming the shine, while vermin ran up and down them, snagging the thread with their claws.
It was not long before the curtains looked tired and depressed; growing to resemble the rest of the house. And no one was angrier than Ronald, who was
incandescent.
‘I had such high hopes of those curtains!’ he declared to a neighbour. ‘But what I discover is that you can’t trust anything. Most disappointing!’
And in a fit of rage, he ripped them down, there and then.
Don’t seek the truth without a clear-out of your premises. It’s our mental and emotional clutter that rots the hope inside.
