“Let another praise you…”

The Parable of the Big Mouth Frog.

Share this simple proverb with your children.

Let another praise you, and not your own mouth; A stranger, and not your own lips. …. Proverbs 27:2

There is a memorable proverb about a big-mouthed frog that lived in Canada.  Each year he enviously watched the geese wing their way on their southern migration.

He wished he could fly, or at least travel to somewhere where it didn’t snow and force him into hibernation.

Being an ingenious big-mouth frog, he developed a plan.  He cut a long thin limb and talked two of his goose friends into helping.   As he instructed them, they each grasped an limb end in their beak, the big-mouth frog grabbed on with his big-mouth and they began the trip south.

It went very well until…

One day as they flew over the fields of Nebraska, two corn farmers looked up and saw the strangest sight:  two geese flying with a frog hanging from a stick between them.

One of the farmers said, “I’ve never seen anything like that.  Wonder who thought that up?”

“I diiiiiiiiiidddddddddddd,”   the big-mouth frog proudly said.

The Proverbs writer wisely tells us to let others brag on us and keep our own mouth shut.

It’s good advice for big-mouth frogs as well as two-legged humans.

“Your horn will toot twice as far if you let someone else toot it.”