Know What You Are Guarding
Illustration★★★★Many years ago a young Russian czar, while walking in the royal gardens, noticed a palace guard standing watch in a nearby field. He asked the young man what he was guarding. The soldier didn’t know. The czar, his curiosity now fully aroused, checked the records. Sure enough, there was an order for a sentry to be stationed on that spot! Years earlier, Catherine the Great had opened the gates of her beautiful rose gardens to the public, but fearful that someone might damage her prize rose, she had stationed a sentry to guard it. The roses had long since disappeared, but the order had never been rescinded. A sentry had continued to protect the spot—now nothing but a patch of weeds!
It is possible that we may be cherishing and guarding some things that are not sacred after all?
The point
A Russian czar discovers a palace guard still standing watch over a patch of weeds, following an order Catherine the Great issued centuries earlier to protect a rose garden that no longer exists—a powerful illustration of blind tradition and guarding things no longer sacred.