I received a mail in my inbox this week.  The opening sentence made it clearly recognisable as spam.

It will take just 37 seconds to read this and change your thinking.

Nothing like an attention grabbing claim to pull me away from what I was doing and read on, just out of sheer curiosity.

Unlike all those Nigerian princes, with their millions of dollars just waiting to be transferred into my account: unlike the Magicians, who regularly ask me to think of a number and then (at the bottom of the mail) inform me that the number I was thinking of was 7 , the author of this message had a story to tell – a story worth re-telling.  This story, you might say, was good enough to spam.

Two men, both seriously ill, occupied the same hospital room. 

One man was allowed to sit up in his bed for an hour each afternoon to help drain the fluid from his lungs. His bed was next to the room's only window.

The other man had to spend all his time flat on his back.

The men talked for hours on end.  They spoke of their wives and families, their homes, their jobs, their involvement in the military service, where they had been on vacation.

Every afternoon, when the man in the bed by the window could sit up, he would pass the time by describing to his roommate all the things he could see outside the window.

The man in the other bed began to live for those one hour periods where his world would be broadened and enlivened by all the activity and colour of the world outside.

The window overlooked a park with a lovely lake.  Ducks and swans played on the water while children sailed their model boats. Young lovers walked arm in arm amidst flowers of every colour and a fine view of the city skyline could be seen in the distance.

As the man by the window described all this in exquisite details, the man on the other side of the room would close his eyes and imagine this picturesque scene.

One warm afternoon, the man by the window described a parade passing by.
Although the other man could not hear the band - he could see it in his mind's eye as the gentleman by the window portrayed it with descriptive words.

Days, weeks and months passed.

One morning, the day nurse arrived to bring water for their baths only to find the lifeless body of the man by the window, who had died peacefully in his sleep.

She was saddened and called the hospital attendants to take the body away.

As soon as it seemed appropriate, the other man asked if he could be moved next to the window. The nurse was happy to make the switch, and after making sure he was comfortable, she left him alone.

Slowly, painfully, he propped himself up on one elbow to take his first look at the real world outside.  He strained to slowly turn to look out the window besides the bed.

It faced a blank wall.

The man asked the nurse what could have compelled his deceased roommate who had described such wonderful things outside this window.

The nurse responded that the man was blind and could not even see the wall.
She said, 'Perhaps he just wanted to encourage you.'

Of course, the story didn’t actually end here.  It is obligatory these days for all spam to conclude with a few fortune-cookie-style wise phrases (in this case ‘Today is a gift, that’s why they call it The Present’), followed by a request to pass this message on to everyone you ever met; followed by a promise that, if you do, you will be the recipient of good luck.

Despite the fact that it was spam, though, I have to confess that I did get to thinking about this mail – both in terms of the medium and the message.

The message hardly needs explanation.  In fact, it shouldn’t be explained.  Like most truthful tales, it’s a shame when you try and unpack it or articulate ‘what the story means’.  It may be ‘meaningful’ to you or me for any number of reasons; resonating with any number of different themes in our lives.  So let’s just say that this short narrative helped me understand the transforming power of stories in our lives and leave it at that.

The critics will say, of course, that it is nothing of the sort.  They will argue that it is sentimentalism, wrapped up in spam.

But then I started thinking about Jesus of Nazareth – a man who knew both how to tell a story and pick exactly the right medium by which to tell it.   We all have our favourites, don’t we?  I like, for example, the one about the son who ran off and squandered all his money, only to find that his father was still able to welcome him with open arms upon his return.

What’s that if not sentimental?  How many fathers, in reality, kill the fatted calf when their wayward teenage children finally decide to return home from the party?

Not many, perhaps.  But the truth of the story as an expression of an ideal should never be dismissed too quickly.  And I can well imagine Jesus, if he happened to live in our time, sending this one around by email with some considerable success.

So what’s the point I am trying to make here? 

We used to say ‘Don’t judge a book by its cover’ and understand exactly what it means.  Today, we might just want to modify this pithy phrase a little and remind ourselves not to delete spam before we judge the truthfulness of the body text.

Or something along those lines.