A Box Full Of Kisses - 裝滿吻的匣子

Once upon a time, a man punished his 5-year-old daughter for using up the family's only roll of expensive gold wrapping paper. Money was tight, and he became even more upset when on Christmas Eve, he saw that the child had pasted the gold paper so as to decorate a shoebox to put under the Christmas tree.
Nevertheless, the next morning the little girl, filled with excitement, brought the gift box to her father and said, "This is for you, Daddy!"
As he opened the box, the father was embarrassed by his earlier overreaction.
But when he opened it, he found it was empty and again his anger flared. "Don't you know, young lady,” he said harshly, “when you give someone a present there's supposed to be something inside the package!"
The little girl looked up at him with tears rolling from her eyes and said: "Daddy, it's not empty. I blew kisses into it until it was all full."
The father was crushed. He fell on his knees and put his arms around his precious little girl. He begged her to forgive him for his unnecessary anger.
An accident took the life of the child only a short time later. It is told that the father kept that little gold box by his bed for all the years of his life. Whenever he was discouraged or faced difficult problems he would open the box, take out an imaginary kiss, and remember the love of this beautiful child who had put it there.
In a very real sense, each of us as human beings have been given an invisible golden box filled with unconditional love and kisses from our children, family, friends and God.
There is no more precious possession anyone could hold. 從前,一位父親懲罰了自己5歲的女兒,因為她用光了家裏僅有的一卷昂貴的金色包裝紙。家中余錢無多，在聖誕前夜來臨時，父親變得更加心煩意亂，他看到了聖誕樹下的一個鞋盒，女兒原來把金紙貼在了這個鞋盒上做裝飾。
然而，聖誕日的早上，小女孩滿是興奮得把這個聖誕禮盒呈到了父親面前，說到：“爸爸，這個送給你！”
當父親打開禮盒時，他為自己先前的過度反應而局促不安著。
但是當他打開盒子後，發現裏面是空的，他的怒火再次爆發了。“你不知道嗎，小丫頭，”他嚴厲地說，“當你送人禮物時，盒子裏面應該是有東西的！”
小女孩擡頭看著氣頭上的父親，淚水在她的眼眶中打圈：“爸爸，它不是空的。這裏面裝滿了我的吻。”
男人頓時被擊垮了。他跪下雙膝，雙手環抱著自己珍愛的小女孩，祈求她的原諒。
之後不久，一場事故奪走了小女孩的生命。據說，父親便將那個小金盒子放在床頭，一直陪伴著他的余生。無論何時他感到氣餒或者遇到難辦的事情，他就會打開禮盒，取出一個假想的吻，記起漂亮女兒給予了自己特殊的愛。
從一個非常真實的意義上說，我們每個人都被贈與過一個無形的金色禮盒，那裏面裝滿了來自子女，家人，朋友及上帝無條件的愛與吻。
人們所能擁有的最珍貴的禮物莫過於此了。