佚名/Anonymous
One windy spring day, I observed young people having fun using the wind to fly their kites. Multicolored creations of varying shapes and sizes filled the skies like beautiful birds darting and dancing. As the strong winds gusted against the kites, a string kept them in check.
Instead of blowing away with the wind, they arose against it to achieve great heights. They shook and pulled, but the restraining string and the cumbersome tail kept them in tow, facing upward and against the wind. As the kites struggled and trembled against the string, they seemed to say,“Let me go! Let me go! I want to be free!”They soared beautifully even as they fought the restriction of the string. Finally, one of the kites succeeded in breaking loose.“Free at last,”it seemed to say.“Free to fly with the wind.”
Yet freedom from restraint simply put it at the mercy of an unsympathetic breeze. It fluttered ungracefully to the ground and landed in a tangled mass of weeds and string against a dead bush.“Free at last”, free to lie powerless in the dirt, to be blown helplessly along the ground, and to lodge lifeless against the first obstruction.
How much like kites we sometimes are. Heaven gives us adversity and restrictions, rules to follow from which we can grow and gain strength. Restraint is a necessary counterpart to the winds of opposition. Some of us tug at the rules so hard that we never soar to reach the heights we might have obtained. We keep part of the commandment and never rise high enough to get our tails off the ground.
Let us each rise to the great heights, recognizing that some of the restraints that we may chafe under are actually the steadying force that helps us ascend and achieve.
一個春風拂麵的日子，一群年輕人正在放風箏。天空中滿是各種顏色、形狀和大小的風箏，猶如穿梭飛舞著的漂亮鳥兒。強勁有力的風吹著風箏，牽引線控製著它們。
風箏並不是隨風而去，而是迎風飄往高處。風的勁吹使它們搖晃著、拉扯著，但牽引線和笨重的尾翼讓它們始終處於控製之中。它們掙紮著、抖動著，似乎在說：“放開我！放開我！我要自由！”就是在與牽引線抗爭之時，它們也依然優雅地飛翔著。終於，其中一隻風箏成功地掙脫了線的束縛，它好像在說：“終於自由了，終於可以隨風自由飛翔了。”