I love short stories. Whether truth or fiction, a short story that challenges us to be better people, or draws us closer to the Lord, or delivers us from a mundane existence is a good thing. If you would like to share your short story or know of one that would bless others, contact me through our contact page and I will consider using it. Some of these stories are going to make your eyes sweat. God bless you and enjoy these. Tom

God's Post it Notes

LET THIS BE OUR AFFIRMATION/RESOLUTION FOR 2012?

By Francis R. Havergal 1874

1. Take my life and let it be
   Consecrated, Lord, to Thee.
   *Take my moments and my days,
   Let them flow in endless praise.
2. Take my hands and let them move
   At the impulse of Thy love.
   Take my feet and let them be
   Swift and beautiful for Thee.
3. Take my voice and let me sing,
   Always, only for my King.
   Take my lips and let them be
   Filled with messages from Thee.
4. Take my silver and my gold,
   Not a mite would I withhold.
   Take my intellect and use
   Every pow’r as Thou shalt choose.
5. Take my will and make it Thine,
   It shall be no longer mine.
   Take my heart, it is Thine own,
   It shall be Thy royal throne.

6. Take my love, my Lord, I pour
   At Thy feet its treasure store.
   Take myself and I will be
   Ever, only, all for Thee.

The Doctor With The Frog Hat

My 9-year-old's last-second request surprised his doctor and taught me a
valuable lesson about sharing the gospel....Tina Blessitt

Last fall my 9-year-old son, Austin, had his tonsils removed. Before the
surgery, Austin 's anesthesiologist came to start an IV. He was wearing a
cool surgical cap covered in colorful frogs. Austin loved that "frog hat."

The doctor explained that he had two choices. He could either try to start
the IV, or he could wait until Austin was up in the operating room. In the
OR the doctor would give Austin some "goofy" gas, and start the IV when he
was more relaxed.

"So, Austin ," he asked, "which do you want?"

Austin replied, "I'll take the gas."

But when the doctor started to leave, Austin called, "Hey, wait."

The doctor turned. Yeah, buddy, what do you need?"

"Do you go to church?"

"No," the doctor admitted. "I know I probably should, but I don't."

Austin then asked, "Well, are you saved?"

Chuckling nervously, the doctor said, "Nope. But after talking to you, maybe
it's something I should consider."

Pleased with his response, Austin answered, "Well, you should, 'cause Jesus
is great!"

"I'm sure He is, little guy," the doctor said, and quickly made his exit.

After that a nurse took me to the waiting room. Someone would come and get
me when Austin 's surgery was done.

After about 45 minutes, the anesthesiologist came into the waiting room. He
told me the surgery went well and then said, "Mrs. Blessitt, I don't usually
come down and talk to the parents after a surgery, but I just had to tell
you what your son did."

Oh boy, I thought. What did that little rascal do now?

The doctor explained that he'd just put the mask on Austin when my son
signaled that he needed to say something. When the doctor removed the mask,
Austin blurted, "Wait a minute, we have to pray!"

The doctor told him to go ahead, and Austin prayed, "Dear Lord, please let
all the doctors and nurses have a good day. And Jesus, please let the doctor
with the frog hat get saved and start going to church. Amen."

The doctor admitted this touched him. "I was so sure he would pray that his
surgery went well," he explained. "He didn't even mention his surgery. He
prayed for me! Mrs Blessitt, I had to come down and let you know what a
great little guy you have."

A few minutes later a nurse came to take me to post-op. She had a big smile
on her face as we walked to the elevator.
"Mrs. Blessitt, I couldn't wait to tell you something exciting that your son
did."

With a smile, I told her that the doctor already mentioned Austin 's prayer.

"But there's something you don't know," she said. "Some of the other nurses
and I have been witnessing to and praying for that doctor for a long time.
After your son's surgery, he tracked a few of us down to tellus about Austin
's prayer. He said, 'Well girls, you got me. If that little boy could pray
for me when he was about to have surgery, then I think maybe I need his
Jesus too."

She then recounted how they joined the doctor as he prayed to receive Christ
right there in the hospital.

Wow! Austin had played a small part in something wonderful. But then, so did
the nurses who prayed and witnessed.
I thought about John's words in his Gospel, "One sows and the other reaps"
(John 4:37 ).

Austin 's experience taught me that, although we never know which role we
may be called to play, in the end it doesn't matter. What's important is
that we remain faithful in sharing the gospel.

Tina Blessitt, a freelance writer, lives with her husband and four children
in Kentucky ...

"Don't tell God how big your troubles are--tell your trouble HOW BIG YOUR
GOD IS!!!

A POEM WORTH READING And sharing!

(Author unknown)

The Nail Holes

There once was a little boy who had a bad temper. His Father gave him a bag of nails and told him that every time he lost his temper, he must hammer a nail into the back of the fence.

The first day the boy had driven 37 nails into the fence. Over the next few weeks, as he learned to control his anger, the number of nails hammered daily gradually dwindled down. He discovered it was easier to hold his temper than to drive those nails into the fence. Finally the day came when the boy didn't lose his temper at all.

He told his father about it and the father suggested that the boy now pull out one nail for each day that he was able to hold his temper.

The days passed and the young boy was finally able to tell his father that all the nails were gone.

The father took his son by the hand and led him to the fence. He said, 'You have done well, my son, but look at the holes in the fence. The fence will never be the same. When you say things in anger, they leave a scar just like this one. You can put a knife in a man and draw it out. But It won't matter how many times you say I'm sorry, the wound will still be there. A verbal wound is as bad as a physical one.

Remember that friends are very rare jewels indeed. They make you smile and encourage you to succeed; They lend an ear, they share words of praise and they always want to open
their hearts to us, yet every time we needlessly hurt them it is like driving a nail into their soul. You might be able to make amends, remove the nail so to speak, but the hole will still be there in their souls long after the original wound heals.

Father John Powell, a professor at Loyola University in Chicago, writes about a student in his Theology of Faith class named Tommy:

Some twelve years ago, I stood watching my university students file into the classroom for our first session in the Theology of Faith.  That was the day I first saw Tommy.  He was combing his long flaxen hair, which hung six inches below his shoulders.
 
It was the first time I had ever seen a boy with hair that long.  
 
I guess it was just coming into fashion then.  I know in my mind that it isn't what's on your head but what's in it that counts; but on that day.  I was unprepared and my emotions flipped.
 
I immediately filed Tommy under "S" for strange... Very strange.
 
Tommy turned out to be the "atheist in residence" in my Theology of Faith course.
 
He constantly objected to, smirked at, or whined about the possibility of an unconditionally loving Father/God.  We lived with each other in relative peace for one semester, although I admit he was for me at times a serious pain in the back pew.
 
When he came up at the end of the course to turn in his final exam, he asked in a cynical tone, "Do you think I'll ever find God?"
 
I decided instantly on a little shock therapy.  "No!" I said very emphatically.
 
"Why not," he responded, "I thought that was the product you were pushing."
 
I let him get five steps from the classroom door and then I called out, "Tommy!  I don't think you'll ever find Him, but I am absolutely certain that He will find you!"  He shrugged a little and left my class and my life.
 
I felt slightly disappointed at the thought that he had missed my clever line -- He will find you!  At least I thought it was clever.
 
Later I heard that Tommy had graduated, and I was duly grateful.
 
Then a sad report came.  I heard that Tommy had terminal cancer.
 
Before I could search him out, he came to see me.

When he walked into my office, his body was very badly wasted and the long hair had all fallen out as a result of chemotherapy.  But his eyes were bright and his voice was firm, for the first time, I believe.
 
"Tommy, I've thought about you so often; I hear you are sick," I blurted out.  
 
"Oh, yes, very sick. I have cancer in both lungs.  It's a matter of weeks."
 
"Can you talk about it, Tom?" I asked.
 
"Sure, what would you like to know?" he replied.
 
"What's it like to be only twenty-four and dying?

"Well, it could be worse.

"Like what?”
 
"Well, like being fifty and having no values or ideals, like being fifty and thinking that booze, seducing women, and making money are the real biggies in life.”
 
I began to look through my mental file cabinet under "S" where I had filed Tommy as strange.  (It seems as though everybody I try to reject by classification, God sends back into my life to educate me.)
 
"But what I really came to see you about," Tom said, "is something you said to me on the last day of class."  (He remembered!) He continued, "I asked you if you thought I would ever find God and you said, 'No!' which surprised me.  Then you said, 'But He will find you.’  I thought about that a lot, even though my search for God was hardly intense at that time. (My clever line. He thought about that a lot!)  "But when the doctors removed a lump from my groin and told me that it was malignant, that's when I got serious about locating God. And when the malignancy spread into my vital organs, I really began banging bloody fists against the bronze doors of heaven..
 
But God did not come out.  In fact, nothing happened.  Did you ever try anything for a long time with great effort and with no success?
 
You get psychologically glutted, fed up with trying.  And then you quit.
 
"Well, one day I woke up, and instead of throwing a few more futile appeals over that high brick wall to a God who may be or may not be there, I just quit.  I decided that I didn't really care about God, about an afterlife, or anything like that.  I decided to spend what time I had left doing something more profitable.  I thought about you and your class and I remembered something else you had said:

'The essential sadness is to go through life without loving..’
 

But it would be almost equally sad to go through life and leave this world without ever telling those you loved that you had loved them.
 
"So, I began with the hardest one, my Dad.  He was reading the newspaper when I approached him.  
 

"Yes, what?" he asked without lowering the newspaper.
 
"Dad, I would like to talk with you."
 

"Well, talk.”
 
"I mean. It's really important."
 
The newspaper came down three slow inches.  "What is it?"
 
"Dad, I love you, I just wanted you to know that."  Tom smiled at me and said it with obvious satisfaction, as though he felt a warm and secret joy flowing inside of him.  
 
"The newspaper fluttered to the floor.  Then my father did two things I could never remember him ever doing before.  He cried and he hugged me. We talked all night, even though he had to go to work the next morning."
 
“It felt so good to be close to my father, to see his tears, to feel his hug, to hear him say that he loved me."
 
"It was easier with my mother and little brother.  They cried with me, too, and we hugged each other, and started saying real nice things to each other.  We shared the things we had been keeping secret for so many years."
 
"I was only sorry about one thing --- that I had waited so long."  
 

"Here I was, just beginning to open up to all the people I had actually been close to..
 
 "Then, one day I turned around and God was there.
 
"He didn't come to me when I pleaded with Him.  I guess I was like an animal trainer holding out a hoop, 'C'mon, jump through.  C'mon, I'll give you three days, three weeks."
 
Apparently God does things in His own way and at His own hour.
 
"But the important thing is that He was there.  He found me! You were right. He found me even after I stopped looking for Him."
                         
"Tommy," I practically gasped, "I think you are saying something very important and much more universal than you realize.  To me, at least, you are saying that the surest way to find God is not to make Him a private possession, a problem solver, or an instant consolation in time of need, but rather by opening to love..
 
You know, the Apostle John said that.  He said: 'God is love, and anyone who lives in love is living with God and God is living in him.’”
 
"Tom, could I ask you a favor?  You know, when I had you in class you were a real pain.  But (laughingly) you can make it all up to me now.  Would you come into my present Theology of Faith course and tell them what you have just told me?  If I told them the same thing it wouldn't be half as effective as if you were to tell it...”
 
"Oooh.. I was ready for you, but I don't know if I'm ready for your class."
 

"Tom, think about it.  If and when you are ready, give me a call."
 
In a few days Tom called, said he was ready for the class, that he wanted to do that for God and for me.
 
So we scheduled a date.
 
However, he never made it.  He had another appointment, far more important than the one with me and my class.
 
Of course, his life was not really ended by his death, only changed.
 
He made the great step from faith into vision.  He found a life far more beautiful than the eye of man has ever seen or the ear of man has ever heard or the mind of man has ever imagined.
 
Before he died, we talked one last time.
 
"I'm not going to make it to your class," he said.

"I know, Tom."
 
"Will you tell them for me? Will you ... tell the whole world for me?"
 
“I will, Tom,” I said. “I'll tell them. I'll do my best."
 
So, to all of you who have been kind enough to read this simple story about God's love, thank you for listening.  And to you, Tommy, somewhere in the sunlit, verdant hills of heaven --- I told them, Tommy, as best I could.
 
If this story means anything to you, please pass it on to a friend or two.
 
It is a true story and is not enhanced for publicity purposes.
 
With thanks, Rev. John Powell, Professor,
                        Loyola University, Chicago

ROSE

The first day of school our professor introduced himself and challenged us to get to know someone we didn't already know. I stood up to look around when a gentle hand touched my shoulder.

I turned around to find a wrinkled, little old lady beaming up at me with a smile that lit up her entire being..

She said, 'Hi handsome. My name is Rose. I'm eighty-seven years old. Can I give you a hug?'

I laughed and enthusiastically responded, 'Of course you may!' and she gave me a giant squeeze..

'Why are you in college at such a young, innocent age?' I asked.

She jokingly replied, 'I'm here to meet a rich husband, get married, and have a couple of kids...'

'No seriously,' I asked. I was curious what may have motivated her to be taking on this challenge at her age.

'I always dreamed of having a college education and now I'm getting one!' she told me.

After class we walked to the student union building and shared a chocolate milkshake.

We became instant friends. Every day for the next three months we would leave class together and talk nonstop. I was always mesmerized listening to this 'time machine' as she shared her wisdom and experience with me..

Over the course of the year, Rose became a campus icon and she easily made friends wherever she went. She loved to dress up and she reveled in the attention bestowed upon her from the other students. She was living it up.

At the end of the semester we invited Rose to speak at our football banquet I'll never forget what she taught us. She was introduced and stepped up to the podium. As she began to deliver her prepared speech, she dropped her three by five cards on the floor.

Frustrated and a little embarrassed she leaned into the microphone and simply said, 'I'm sorry I'm so jittery. I gave up beer for Lent and this whiskey is killing me! I'll never get my speech back in order so let me just tell you what I know.'

As we laughed she cleared her throat and began, ' We do not stop playing because we are old; we grow old because we stop playing.

There are only four secrets to staying young, being happy, and achieving success. You have to laugh and find humor every day. You've got to have a dream. When you lose your dreams, you die.

We have so many people walking around who are dead and don't even know it!

There is a huge difference between growing older and growing up.

If you are nineteen years old and lie in bed for one full year and don't do one productive thing, you will turn twenty years old. If I am eighty-seven years old and stay in bed for a year and never do anything I will turn eighty-eight.

Anybody! Can grow older. That doesn't take any talent or ability. The idea is to grow up by always finding opportunity in change. Have no regrets.

The elderly usually don't have regrets for what we did, but rather for things we did not do. The only people who fear death are those with regrets..'

She concluded her speech by courageously singing 'The Rose.'

She challenged each of us to study the lyrics and live them out in our daily lives. At the year's end Rose finished the college degree she had begun all those months ago.

One week after graduation Rose died peacefully in her sleep.

Over two thousand college students attended her funeral in tribute to the wonderful woman who taught by example that it's never too late to be all you can possibly be.

When you finish reading this, please send this peaceful word of advice to your friends and family, they'll really enjoy it!

These words have been passed along in loving memory of ROSE.

REMEMBER, GROWING OLDER IS MANDATORY. GROWING UP IS OPTIONAL. We make a Living by what we get. We make a Life by what we give.

God promises a safe landing, not a calm passage. If God brings you to it, He will bring you through it.

Pass this message on to 7 people. You will receive a miracle tomorrow (if you don't think so....look out your window when you wake in the morning and think about it )

If you choose not, then you refuse to bless someone else.

'Good friends are like stars..... ....You don't always see them, but you know they are always there.'

This is something we should all read at least once a week.

Make sure you read to the end!!

Written by Regina Brett, 90 years old, of the Plain Dealer, Cleveland , Ohio .
"To celebrate growing older, I once wrote the 45 lessons life taught me. It is the most requested column I've ever written.

My odometer rolled over to 90 in August, so here is the column once more:

1. Life isn't fair, but it's still good.
2. When in doubt, just take the next small step.

3. Life is too short to waste time hating anyone.
4. Your job won't take care of you when you are sick. Your friends and parents will. Stay in touch.
5. Pay off your credit cards every month.
6. You don't have to win every argument. Agree to disagree.
7. Cry with someone. It's more healing than crying alone.
8. It's OK to get angry with God. He can take it.
9. Save for retirement starting with your first paycheck.
10. When it comes to chocolate, resistance is futile.
11. Make peace with your past so it won't screw up the present.
12. It's OK to let your children see you cry.
13. Don't compare your life to others. You have no idea what their journey is all about.
14. If a relationship has to be a secret, you shouldn't be in it.
15. Everything can change in the blink of an eye. But don't worry; God never blinks.
16. Take a deep breath. It calms the mind.
17. Get rid of anything that isn't useful, beautiful or joyful.
18. Whatever doesn't kill you really does make you stronger.
19. It's never too late to have a happy childhood. But the second one is up to you and no one else.
20. When it comes to going after what you love in life, don't take no for an answer.
21. Burn the candles, use the nice sheets, wear the fancy lingerie. Don't save it for a special occasion. Today is special.
22. Over prepare, then go with the flow.
23. Be eccentric now. Don't wait for old age to wear purple.
24. The most important sex organ is the brain.
25. No one is in charge of your happiness but you.
26. Frame every so-called disaster with these words 'In five years, will this matter?'
27. Always choose life.
28. Forgive everyone everything.
29. What other people think of you is none of your business.
30. Time heals almost everything. Give time time.
31. However good or bad a situation is, it will change.
32. Don't take yourself so seriously. No one else does.
33. Believe in miracles.
34. God loves you because of who God is, not because of anything you did or didn't do.
35. Don't audit life. Show up and make the most of it now.
36. Growing old beats the alternative -- dying young.
37. Your children get only one childhood.
38. All that truly matters in the end is that you loved.
39. Get outside every day. Miracles are waiting everywhere.
40. If we all threw our problems in a pile and saw everyone else's, we'd grab ours back.
41. Envy is a waste of time. You already have all you need.
42. The best is yet to come...
43. No matter how you feel, get up, dress up and show up.
44. Yield.
45. Life isn't tied with a bow, but it's still a gift."

WHAT I BELIEVE--

The Gift

======

A young man was getting ready to graduate from college.

For many months he had admired a beautiful sports car in a

dealer's showroom, and knowing his father could well afford

it, he told him that was all he wanted.

As Graduation Day approached, the young man awaited signs that

his father had purchased the car. Finally, on the morning of

his graduation, his father called him into his private study.

His father told him how proud he was to have such a fine son and

told him how much he loved him.

He handed his son a beautifully wrapped gift box.

Curious and somewhat disappointed, the young man opened the

Box and found a lovely, leather-bound Bible, with his name embossed in gold.

Angry, he raised his voice at his father and said, "With all your money, all you give me is a Bible?"

With that he stormed out of the house.

Many years passed.

The young man was very successful in business.

He had a beautiful home and wonderful family.

He realized that his father was already very old and thought

perhaps he should patch things up with him.

He had not seen him since that graduation day.

Before he could make arrangements, he received a telegram

telling him his father had passed away and willed all of his

possessions to his son. He needed to come home immediately and

take charge.

When he arrived, a wave of sadness and regret enveloped his

heart. He began to search through his father's important papers and saw the still gift-wrapped Bible, just as he had left it years ago.

With tears, he opened the Bible and began to leaf through the

pages. His father had carefully underlined a verse, Matt.7:11.

"If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts

to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give

good gifts to those who ask him!"

As he read those words, a car key dropped from the back of the

Bible. It had a tag with the dealer's name, the same dealer who

had the sports car he had desired. On the tag was the date of

his graduation and the words PAID IN FULL.

Sometimes we under estimate our heavenly father's plan and power

and we do things on our own will. But our God knows what to give and when to give.

~Author Unknown~

A Poem

Although things are not perfect

Because of trial or pain

Continue in thanksgiving

Do not begin to blame

Even when the times are hard

Fierce winds are bound to blow

God is forever able

Hold on to what you know

Imagine life without His love

Joy would cease to be

Keep thanking Him for all the things

Love imparts to thee

Move out of 'Camp Complaining'

No weapon that is known

On earth can yield the power

Praise can do alone

Quit looking at the future

Redeem the time at hand

Start every day with worship

To 'thank' is a command

Until we see Him coming

Victorious in the sky

We'll run the race with gratitude

Exalting God most high

Yes, there'll be good times

And yes some will be bad

But your mansion waits in glory

Where none are ever Sad!

Cherokee Legend

Do you know the legend of the Cherokee Indian youths' rite of Passage?

His father takes him into the forest, blindfolds him and leaves him alone. He is required to sit on a stump the whole night and not remove the blindfold until the rays of the morning sun shine through it. He cannot cry out for help to anyone.

Once he survives the night, he is a MAN.

He cannot tell the other boys of this experience, because each lad must come into manhood on his own.

The boy is naturally terrified. He can hear all kinds of noises. Wild beasts must surely be all around him . Maybe even some human might do him harm.

The wind blew the grass and earth, and shook his stump, but he sat stoically, never removing the blindfold. It would be the only way he could become a man!

Finally, after a horrific night the sun appeared and he removed his blindfold.

It was then that he discovered his father sitting on the stump next to him.

He had been at watch the entire night, protecting his son from harm.

We, too, are never alone. Even when we don't know it, God is watching over us, sitting on the stump beside us.

When trouble comes, all we have to do is reach out to Him.

If you liked this story, copy and pass it on.

If not, you took off your blindfold before dawn.

Moral of the story:

Just because you can't see God,

Doesn't mean He is not there.

"For we walk by faith, not by sight."

THE BIRTH OF THE SONG 'PRECIOUS LORD'

Back in 1932, I was a fairly new husband. My wife, Nettie and I were living in a little apartment on Chicago's south side. One hot August afternoon I had to go to St. Louis where I was to be the featured soloist at a large revival meeting. I didn't want to go. Nettie was in the last month of pregnancy with our first child. But a lot of people were expecting me in St. Louis I kissed Nettie good-bye, clattered downstairs to our Model A and, in a fresh Lake Michiganbreeze, chugged out of Chicagoon Route 66. However, outside the city, I discovered that in my anxiety at leaving, I had forgotten my music case. I wheeled around and headed back.

I found Nettie sleeping peacefully. I hesitated by her bed; something was strongly telling me to stay. But eager to get on my way, and not wanting to disturb Nettie, I shrugged off the feeling and quietly slipped out of the room with my music.

The next night, in the steaming St. Louis heat, the crowd called on me to sing again and again. When I finally sat down, a messenger boy ran up with a Western Uniontelegram. I ripped open the envelope. Pasted on the yellow sheet were the words: YOUR WIFE JUST DIED.

People were happily singing and clapping around me, but I could hardly keep from crying out. I rushed to a phone and called home. All I could hear on the other end was 'Nettie is dead. Nettie is dead.'

When I got back, I learned that Nettie had given birth to a boy. I swung between grief and joy. Yet that same night, the baby died. I buried Nettie and our little boy together, in the same casket. Then I fell apart.

For days I closeted myself. I felt that God had done me an injustice. I didn't want to serve Him anymore or write gospel songs. I just wanted to go back to that jazz world I once knew so well. But then, as I hunched alone in that dark apartment those first sad days, I thought back to the afternoon I went to St. Louis. Something kept telling me to stay with Nettie. Was that something God? Oh, if I had paid more attention to Him that day, I would have stayed and been with Nettie when she died.

From that moment on I vowed to listen more closely to Him. But still I was lost in grief. Everyone was kind to me, especially one friend. The following Saturday evening he took me up to Maloney's Poro College, a neighborhood music school. It was quiet; the late evening sun crept through the curtained windows.

I sat down at the piano, and my hands began to browse over the keys. Something happened to me then. I felt at peace. I felt as though I could reach out and touch God. I found myself playing a melody, once into my head they just seemed to fall into place: 'Precious Lord, take my hand, lead me on, let me stand, I am tired, I am weak, I am worn, through the storm, through the night, lead me on to the light, take my hand, precious Lord, lead me home.'

The Lord gave me these words and melody, He also healed my spirit. I learned that when we are in our deepest grief, when we feel farthest from God, this is when He is closest, and when we are most open to His restoring power.

And so I go on living for God willingly and joyfully, until that day comes when He will take me and gently lead me home.

-Tommy Dorsey-

THE OLD FISHERMAN

Our house was directly across the street from the clinic entrance of Johns
Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. We lived downstairs & rented the upstairs
rooms to outpatients at the Clinic.

One summer evening as I was fixing supper, there was a knock at the door.
I opened it to see a truly awful looking man. 'Why, he's hardly taller than
my eight-year-old,' I thought as I stared at the stooped, shriveled body.

But the appalling thing was his face, lopsided from swelling, red & raw.
Yet, his voice was pleasant as he said,'Good evening. I've come to see if
you've a room for just one night. I came for a treatment this morning from
the eastern shore, & there's no bus 'till morning.'

He told me he'd been hunting for a room since noon but with no success; no
one seemed to have a room. 'I guess it's my face. I know it looks terrible,
but my doctor says with a few more treatments...'

For a moment I hesitated, but his next words convinced me, 'I could sleep in
this rocking chair on the porch. My bus leaves early in the morning.' I told
him we would find him a bed, but to rest on the porch. I went inside &
finished getting supper. When we were ready, I asked the old man if he would
join us. 'No thank you. I have plenty' And he held up a brown paper bag.

When I had finished the dishes, I went out on the porch to talk with him a
few minutes. It didn't take a long time to see that this old man had an over
sized heart crowded into that tiny body. He told me he fished for a living
to support his daughter, her five children & her husband, who was hopelessly
crippled from a back injury.

He didn't tell it by way of complaint; in fact, every other sentence was
prefaced with thanks to God for a blessing. He was grateful that no pain
accompanied his disease, which was apparently a form of skin cancer. He was
thankful for the strength to keep going.

At bedtime, we put a camp cot in the children's room for him. When I got up
in the morning, the bed linens were neatly folded, & the little man was out
on the porch.

He refused breakfast, but just before he left for his bus, haltingly, as if
asking a great favor, he said, 'Could I please come back & stay the next
time I have a treatment? I won't put you out a bit. I can sleep fine in a
chair.' He paused a moment & then added, 'Your children made me feel at
home. Grownups are bothered  by my face, but children don't seem to mind.' I
told him he was welcome to come again.

And on his next trip he arrived a little after seven in the morning. As a
gift, he brought a big fish & a quart of the largest oysters I had ever
seen. He said he had shucked them that morning before he left so that they'd
be nice & fresh. I knew his bus left at 4 a.m., & I wondered what time he
had to get up in order to do this for us.

In the years he came to stay overnight with us there was never a time that
he did not bring us fish or oysters or vegetables from his garden.

Other times we received packages in the mail, always by special delivery;
fish & oysters packed in a box of fresh young spinach or kale, every leaf
carefully washed. Knowing that he must walk three miles to mail these &
knowing how little money he had made the gifts doubly precious.

When I received these little remembrances, I often thought of a comment our
next-door neighbor made after he left that first morning. 'Did you keep that
awful looking man last night? I turned him away! You can lose roomers by
putting up such people!'

Maybe we did lose roomers once or twice But, oh if only they could have
known him, perhaps their illness would have been easier to bear. I know our
family always will be grateful to have known him; from him we learned what
it was to accept the bad without complaint & the good with gratitude...

Recently I was visiting a friend who has a greenhouse. As she showed me her
flowers, we came to the most beautiful one of all, a golden chrysanthemum,
bursting with blooms. But to my great surprise, it was growing in an old
dented, rusty bucket. I thought to myself, 'If this were my plant, I'd put
it in the loveliest container I had!'

My friend changed my mind. 'I ran short of pots,' she explained, 'and
knowing how beautiful this one would be, I thought it wouldn't mind starting
out in this old pail. It's just for a little while, till I can put it out in
the garden.'

She must have wondered why I laughed so delightedly, but I was imagining
just such a scene in heaven. There's an especially beautiful one,' God might
have said when he came to the soul of the sweet old fisherman. 'He won't
mind starting in this small body.'

All this happened long ago -- and now, in God's garden, how tall this lovely
soul must stand..

The LORD does not look at the things man looks at. Man looks at the outward
appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart.'

Friends are very special. They make you smile & encourage you to succeed.
They lend an ear & they share a word of praise. Show your friends how much
you care.

THE OLD PATHS

I liked the old paths, when

Moms were at home.

Dads were at work.

Brothers went into the army.

And sisters got married BEFORE having children!

Crime did not pay;

Hard work did;

And people knew the difference.

Moms could cook;

Dads would work;

Children would behave.

Husbands were loving;

Wives were supportive;

And children were polite.

Women wore the jewelry;

And Men wore the pants.

Women looked like ladies;

Men looked like gentlemen;

And children looked decent.

People loved the truth,

And hated a lie.

They came to church to get IN,

Not to get OUT!

Hymns sounded Godly;

Sermons sounded helpful;

Rejoicing sounded normal;

And crying sounded sincere.

Cursing was wicked;

Drugs were for illness.

The flag was honored;

America was beautiful;

And God was welcome!

We read the Bible in public;

Prayed in school;

And preached from house to house.

To be called an American was worth dying for;

To be called an American was worth living for;

To be called a traitor was a shame!

I still like the old paths the best!

'The Old Paths' was written by a retired minister who lives In Tennessee .

The Pickle Jar
The pickle jar as far back as I can remember sat on the floor beside the dresser in my parents' bedroom. When he got ready for bed, Dad would empty his pockets and toss his coins into the jar. As a small boy, I was always fascinated at the sounds the coins made as they were dropped into the jar . They landed with a merry jingle when the jar was almost empty. Then the tones gradually muted to a dull thud as the jar was filled.

I used to squat on the floor in front of the jar to admire the copper and silver circles that glinted like a pirate's treasure when the sun poured through the bedroom window. When the jar was filled, Dad would sit at the kitchen table a nd roll the coins before taking them to the bank.

Taking the coins to the bank was always a big production. Stacked neatly in a small cardboard box, the coins were placed between Dad and me on the seat of his old truck. Each and every time, as we drove to the bank, Dad would look at me hopefully. 'Those coins are going to keep you out of the textile mill, son. You're going to do better than me. This old mill town's not going to hold you back.'

Also, each and every time, as he slid the box of rolled coins across the counter at the bank toward the cashier, he would grin proudly.. 'These are for my son's college fund. He'll never work at the mill all his life like me.'

We would always celebrate each deposit by stopping for an ice cream cone. I always got chocolate. Dad always got vanilla.. When the clerk at the ice cream
parlor handed Dad his change, he would show me the few coins nestled in his palm. 'When we get home, we'll start filling the jar again.' He always let me drop
the first coins into the empty jar. As they rattled around with a brief, happy jingle, we grinned at each other.

'You'll get to college on pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters,' he said.. 'But you'll get there; I'll see to that.'

No matter how rough things got at home, Dad continued to doggedly drop his coins into the jar. Even the summer when Dad got laid off from the mill,and Mama had to serve dried beans several times a week, not a single dime was taken from the jar.

To the contrary, as Dad looked across the table at me, pouring catsup over my beans to make them more palatable, he became more determined than ever to
make a way out for me 'When you finish college, Son,' he told me, his eyes glistening, 'You'll never have to eat beans again - unless you want to.'

The years passed, and I finished college and took a job in another town. Once, while visiting my parents, I used the phone in their bedroom, and noticed that
the pickle jar was gone. It had served its purpose and had been removed.

A lump rose in my throat as I stared at the spot beside the dresser where the jar had always stood. My dad was a man of few words: he never lectured me on the
values of determination, perseverance, and faith. The pickle jar had taught me all these virtues far more eloquently than the most flowery of words could have done.

When I married, I told my wife Susan about the significant part the lowly pickle jar had played in my life as a boy. In my mind, it defined, more than anything else, how much my dad had loved me.

The first Christmas after our daughter Jessica was born, we spent the holiday with my parents. After dinner, Mom and Dad sat next to each other on the sofa, taking turns cuddling their first grandchild. Jessica began to whimper softly, and Susan took her from Dad's arms. 'She probably needs to be changed,' she said, carrying the baby into my parents' bedroom to diaper her. When Susan came back into the living room, there was a strange mist in her eyes. She handed Jessica back to Dad before taking my hand and leading me into the room. 'Look,' she said softly, her
eyes directing me to a spot on the floor beside the dresser.

To my amazement, there, as if it had never been removed, stood the old pickle jar, the bottom already covered with coins. I walked over to the pickle jar, dug down into my pocket, and pulled out a fistful of coins. With a gamut of emotions choking me, I dropped the coins into the jar. I looked up and saw that Dad, carrying Jessica, had slipped quietly into the room. Our eyes locked, and I knew he was feeling the same emotions I felt. Neither one of us could speak.

This truly touched my heart. Sometimes we are so busy adding up our troubles that we forget to count our blessings.Never underestimate the power of your actions.
With one small gesture you can change a person's life, for better or for worse.
God puts us all in each other's lives to impact one another in some way. Look for GOOD in others.

The best and most beautiful things cannot be seen or touched - they must be felt with the heart ~ Helen Keller

- Happy moments, praise God.
- Difficult moments, seek God.
- Quiet moments, worship God.
- Painful moments, trust God.
- Every moment, thank God.

Billy Graham’s New Suit

Billy Graham is now 92-years-old with Parkinson's disease.  In January 2000, leaders in Charlotte , North Carolina , invited their favorite son, Billy Graham, to a luncheon in his honor.  

Billy initially hesitated to accept the invitation because he  struggles with Parkinson's disease.  But the Charlotte  leaders said, 'We don't expect a major address.  Just come and let us honor you.'  So he agreed.  

After wonderful things were said about him, Dr. Graham stepped to the rostrum, looked at the crowd, and said,  "I'm reminded today of Albert Einstein, the great physicist who this month has been honored by Time magazine as the Man of the Century.  Einstein was once traveling from  Princeton on a train when the conductor came down the aisle, punching the tickets of every passenger.  When he  came to Einstein, Einstein reached in his vest pocket.   He couldn't find his ticket, so he reached in his trouser pockets.  It wasn't there. He looked in his briefcase but couldn't find it. Then he looked in the seat beside him.  He still couldn't find it.  

"The conductor said, 'Dr Einstein, I know who you are.  We all know who you are.  I'm sure you bought a ticket.  Don't worry about it.'

"Einstein nodded appreciatively.  The conductor continued down the aisle punching tickets.  As he was ready to move to the next car, he turned around and saw the great physicist down on his hands and knees looking under his seat for his ticket.  

"The conductor rushed back and said, 'Dr. Einstein, Dr. Einstein, don't worry, I know who you are; no problem.  You don't need a ticket.  I'm sure you bought one.'

Einstein looked at him and said,  'Young man, I too, know who I am.  What I don't know is where I'm going.''   

Having said that Billy Graham continued, "See the suit I'm wearing?  It's a brand new suit.  My children, and my grandchildren are telling me I've gotten a little slovenly in my old age.  I used to be a bit more fastidious. So I went out and bought a new suit for this luncheon and one more occasion.  You know what that occasion is?  This is the suit in which I'll be buried.  But when you hear I'm dead, I don't want you to immediately remember the suit I'm wearing.  I want you to remember this:  I not only know who I am. I also know where I'm going."  

Anonymous

GOD'S ROSEBUD

A new minister was walking with an older,
more seasoned minister  in the garden one day.

Feeling a bit insecure about what God had for him to do, 

he was asking the older preacher for some advice.

The older preacher walked up to a rosebush
and handed the young preacher a rosebud
and told him to open it without tearing off any petals.

The young preacher looked in disbelief at the
older preacher and was trying to figure out
what a rosebud could possibly have to do with his
wanting to know the will of God for his life and ministry.

But because of his great respect for the older preacher, he
proceeded to try to unfold the rose, while keeping every petal intact.

It wasn't long before he realized how impossible this was to do.

Noticing the younger preacher's inability to unfold the rosebud
without tearing it, the older preacher
began to recite the following poem...

"It is only a tiny rosebud, A flower of God's design;
But I cannot unfold the petals With these clumsy hands of mine."

"The secret of unfolding flowers  Is not known to such as I.
GOD opens this flower so easily, But in my hands they die."

"If I cannot unfold a rosebud, This flower of God's design,
Then how can I have the wisdom To unfold this life of mine?"

"So I'll trust in God for leading Each moment of my day.
I will look to God for guidance In each step of the way."

"The path that lies before me, Only my Lord knows.
I'll trust God to unfold the moments, Just as He unfolds the rose."

~ Please share this poem with a friend if you enjoyed
being reminded to let go and let God unfold your life

TEN LITTLE CHRISTIANS

Ten little Christians standing in a line,

One disliked the pastor, then there were nine.

Nine little Christians stayed up very late,

One slept in on Sunday, then there were eight.

Eight little Christians on their way to heaven,

One took the low road, then there were seven.

Seven little Christians chirping like chicks,

One disliked the music, then there were six.

Six little Christians seemed very much alive,

But one lost his interest, then there were five.

Five little Christians pulling for Heaven's shore,

But one stopped to rest, then there were four.

Four little Christians, each busy as a bee,

One got her feelings hurt, then there were three.

Three little Christians knew what to do,

One joined the sports crowd, then there were two.

Two little Christians, our rhyme is nearly done,

Differed with each other, then there was one.

One little Christian can't do much 'tis true;

Brought his friend to Bible study, then there were two.

Two earnest Christians, each won one more,

That doubled their number, then there were four.

Four sincere Christians worked early and late,

Each won another, then there were eight.

Eight little Christians, if they doubled as before,

In just a few short weeks, we'd have 1,024.

In this little jingle, there's a lesson true:

You belong to the building--or the wrecking crew.

I used to wonder what it was that artist and photographers seemed to see in old barns that captured their attention. I just couldn’t figure out what it was that possessed so many of them to paint so many pictures of old barns. No I think I know.

Every time I am asked to pray, I think of the old fellow who always prayed, 'Lord, prop us up on our leanin' side. 'After hearing him pray that prayer many times, someone asked him why he prayed that prayer so fervently he answered, 'Well sir, you see, it's like this... I got an old  barn out back.  It's been there a long time; it's withstood a lot of weather; it's gone through a lot of storms, and it's stood for many years. It's still standing. But one day I noticed it was leaning to one side a bit. So I went and got some pine poles and propped it up on its leaning side so it wouldn't fall. Then I got to thinking about that and how much I was like that old barn. I've been around a long time.  I've withstood a lot of life's storms. I've withstood a lot of bad weather in life, I've withstood a lot of hard times, and I'm still standing too. But I find myself leaning to one side from time to time, so I like to ask the Lord to prop us up on our leaning side, 'cause I figure a lot of us get to leaning at times.
Sometimes we get to leaning toward anger, leaning toward bitterness, leaning toward hatred, leaning toward cussing, leaning toward a lot of things that we shouldn't . So we need to pray, 'Lord, prop us up on our leanin' side, so we will stand straight and tall again, to glorify the Lord.''

If you stare at this barn for a second you will see who will help us stand straight and tall again..Do You See HIM? 

GRANDMA'S  HANDS

Grandma, some ninety plus years, sat feebly on the patio bench.. She didn't move, just sat with her head down staring at her hands.

When I sat down beside her she didn't acknowledge my presence and the longer I sat I wondered if she was OK.

Finally, not really wanting to disturb her but wanting to check on her at the same time, I asked her if she was OK. She raised her head and looked at me and smiled. 'Yes, I'm fine, thank you for asking,' she said in a clear voice strong.

'I didn't mean to disturb you, grandma, but you were just sitting here staring at your hands and I wanted to make sure you were OK,' I explained to her.

'Have you ever looked at your hands,' she asked. 'I mean really looked at your hands?'

I slowly opened my hands and stared down at them. I turned them over, palms up and then palms down. No, I guess I had never really looked at my hands as I tried to figure out the point she was making.

Grandma smiled and related this story:

'Stop and think for a moment about the hands you have, how they have served you well throughout your years.  These hands, though wrinkled shriveled and weak have been the tools I have used all my life to reach out and grab and embrace life.

'They braced and caught my fall when as a toddler I crashed upon the floor.

They put food in my mouth and clothes on my back. As a child, my mother taught me to fold them in prayer.  They tied my shoes and pulled on my boots. They held my husband and wiped my tears when he went off to war.

'They have been dirty, scraped and raw, swollen and bent.  They were uneasy and clumsy when I tried to hold my newborn son. Decorated with my wedding band they showed the world that I was married and loved someone special.

They  wrote my letters to him and trembled and shook when I buried my parents and  spouse.

'They  have held my children and grandchildren, consoled neighbors, and shook in fists of anger when I didn't understand.

They have covered my face, combed my hair, and washed and cleansed the rest of my body. They have been sticky and wet, bent and broken, dried and raw. And to this day when not much of anything else of me works real well these hands hold me up, lay me down, and again continue to fold in prayer.

'These hands are the mark of where I've been and the ruggedness of life.

But more importantly it will be these hands that God will reach out and take when he leads me home. And with my hands He will lift me to His side and there I will use these hands to touch the face of God.'

I will never look at my hands the same again. But I remember God reached out and took my grandma's hands and led her home. When my hands are hurt or sore or when I stroke the face of my children and husband I think of grandma. I know she has been stroked and caressed and held by the hands of God.

I, too, want to touch the face of God and feel His  hands upon my face.

My belated Mothers Day Card to all mothers in America

A Newborn ' s Conversation with God 

A baby asked God, "They tell me you are sending me to earth tomorrow, but how am I going to live there being so small and helpless?" 

God said, "Your angel will be waiting for you and will take care of you." 

The child further inquired, "But tell me, here in heaven I don't have to do anything but sing and smile to be happy." 

God said, "Your angel will sing for you and will also smile for you.  And you will feel your angel's love and be very happy." 

Again the small child asked, "And how am I going to be able to understand when people talk to me if I don't know the language?" 

God said, "Your angel will tell you the most beautiful and sweet words you will ever hear, and with much patience and care, your angel will teach you how to speak." 

"And what am I going to do when I want to talk to you?" 

God said, "Your angel will place your hands together and will teach you how to pray." 

"Who will protect me?" 

God said, "Your angel will defend you even if it means risking its life." 

"But I will always be sad because I will not see you anymore." 

God said, "Your angel will always talk to you about Me and will teach you the way to come back to Me, even though I will always be next to you." 

At that moment there was much peace in Heaven, but voices from Earth could be heard and the child hurriedly asked, "God, if I am to leave now, please tell me my angel's name." 

God said, You will simply call her, "Mom."

My Kind of Mentor

I was at the corner grocery store buying some early potatoes... I noticed a small boy, delicate of bone and feature, ragged but clean, hungrily apprising a basket of freshly picked green peas.

I paid for my potatoes but was also drawn to the display of fresh green peas. I am a pushover for creamed peas and new potatoes.

Pondering the peas, I couldn't help overhearing the conversation between Mr. Miller (the store owner) and the ragged boy next to me.

'Hello Barry, how are you today?'

'H'lo, Mr. Miller. Fine, thank ya. Jus' admirin' them peas. They sure look good.'

'They are good, Barry. How's your Ma?'

'Fine. Gittin' stronger alla' time.'

'Good. Anything I can help you with?'

'No, Sir. Jus' admirin' them peas.'

'Would you like to take some home?'

Asked Mr. Miller.

'No, Sir. Got nuthin' to pay for 'em with.'

'Well, what have you to trade me for some of those peas?'

'All I got's my prize marble here.'

'Is that right? Let me see it' said Miller.

'Here 'tis. She's a dandy.'

'I can see that. Hmm mmm, only thing is this one is blue and I sort of go for red. Do you have a red one like this at home?' the
Store owner asked..

'Not zackley but almost.'

'Tell you what. Take this sack of peas home with you and next trip this way let me look at that red marble'. Mr. Miller told the boy.

'Sure will. Thanks Mr. Miller.'

Mrs. Miller, who had been standing nearby, came over to help me.

With a smile she said, 'There are two other boys like him in our community, all three are in very poor circumstances. Jim just loves to bargain with them for peas, apples, tomatoes, or whatever.

When they come back with their red marbles, and they always do, he decides he doesn't like red after all and he sends them home with a bag of produce for a green marble or an orange one, when they come on their next trip to the store.'

I left the store smiling to myself, impressed with this man. A short time later I moved to Colorado , but I never forgot the story of this man, the boys, and their bartering for marbles.

Several years went by, each more rapid than the previous one. Just recently I had occasion to visit some old friends in that Idaho community and while I was there learned that Mr. Miller had died. They were having his
Visitation that evening and knowing my friends wanted to go, I agreed to accompany them. Upon arrival at the mortuary we fell into line to meet the relatives of the deceased and to offer whatever words of comfort we could.

Ahead of us in line were three young men. One was in an army uniform and the other two wore nice haircuts, dark suits and white shirts...all very professional looking. They approached Mrs. Miller, standing composed and smiling by her husband's casket.

Each of the young men hugged her, kissed her on the cheek, spoke briefly with her and moved on to the casket. Her misty light blue eyes followed them as, one by one; each young man stopped briefly and placed his own warm hand over the cold pale hand in the casket. Each left the mortuary awkwardly, wiping his eyes.

Our turn came to meet Mrs. Miller. I told her who I was and reminded her of the story from those many years ago and what she had told me about her husband's bartering for marbles. With her eyes glistening, she took my hand and led me to the casket.

'Those three young men who just left were the boys I told you about.

They just told me how they appreciated the things Jim 'traded' them. Now, at last, when Jim could not change his mind about color or size......they came to pay their debt.'

'We've never had a great deal of the wealth of this world,' she confided, 'but right now, Jim would consider himself the richest man in Idaho ..'

With loving gentleness she lifted the lifeless fingers of her deceased husband. Resting underneath were three exquisitely shined red marbles.

The Moral:

We will not be remembered by our words, but by our kind deeds. Life is not measured by the breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath.

The Carpenter

Once upon a time, two brothers who lived on adjoining farms fell into conflict. It was the first serious rift in 40 years of farming side-by-side, sharing machinery and trading labor and goods as needed without a hitch.

Then the long collaboration fell apart. It began with a small misunderstanding and it grew into a major difference and finally, it exploded into an exchange of bitter words followed by weeks of silence.

One morning there was a knock on John's door. He opened it to find a man with a carpenter's toolbox. "I 'm looking for a few days' work," he said. "Perhaps you would have a few small jobs here and there I could help with? Could I help you?"

"Yes," said the older brother. "I do have a job for you. Look across the creek at that farm. That's my neighbor. In fact, it's my younger brother! Last week there was a meadow between us. He recently took his bulldozer to the river levee and now there is a creek between us.  Well, he may have done this to spite me, but I'll do him one better. See that pile of lumber by the barn? I want you to build me a fence an 8-foot fence -- so I won't need to see his place or his face anymore."

The carpenter said, "I think I understand the situation. Show me the nails and the post-hole digger and I'll be able to do a job that pleases you."

The older brother had to go to town, so he helped the carpenter get the materials ready and then he was off for the day. The carpenter worked hard all that day -- measuring, sawing and nailing. About sunset when the farmer returned, the carpenter had just finished his job.

The farmer's eyes opened wide, his jaw dropped. There was no fence there at all.

It was a bridge .. a bridge that stretched from one side of the creek to the other! A fine piece of work, handrails and all! And the neighbor, his younger brother, was coming toward them, his hand outstretched..

"You are quite a fellow to build this bridge after all I've said and done."

The two brothers stood at each end of the bridge, and then they met in middle, taking each other's hand. They turned to see the carpenter hoist his toolbox onto his shoulder.

"No, wait! Stay a few days. I've a lot of other projects for you," said the older brother.
"I'd love to stay on," the carpenter said, "but I have many more bridges to build."

Remember This...  

At the judgment seat of Christ…

Knowing Your Master

A man turned to his doctor as he was preparing to leave the examination room and said, "Doctor, I am afraid to die.  Tell me what lies on the other side."  Very quietly, the doctor said, "I don't know."  "You don't know?  You're a Christian, and don't know what's on the other side?"

The doctor was holding the handle of the door; on the other side came a sound of scratching and whining, and as he opened the door, a dog sprang into the room and leaped on him with an eager show of gladness.  

Turning to the patient, the doctor said, "Did you notice my dog?  He's never been in this room before.  He didn't know what was inside.  He knew nothing except that his master was here, and when the door opened,  he sprang in without fear.  I know little of what is on the other side of death, but I do know one thing...I know my Master is there and that is enough."

A True Story.
In 2003, police in Warwickshire , England , opened a garden shed and found a whimpering, cowering dog. The dog had been locked in the shed and abandoned. It was dirty and malnourished, and had quite clearly been abused.

In an act of kindness, the police took the dog, which was a female greyhound, to the Nuneaton Warwickshire Wildlife Sanctuary, which is run by a man named Geoff Grewcock, and known as a haven for animals abandoned, orphaned, or otherwise in need.

Geoff and the other sanctuary staff went to work with two aims: to restore the dog to full health, and to win her trust. It took several weeks, but eventually both goals were achieved. They named her Jasmine, and they started to think about finding her an adoptive home.

Jasmine, however, had other ideas. No one quite remembers how it came about, but Jasmine started welcoming all animal arrivals at the sanctuary. It would not matter if it were a puppy, a fox cub, a rabbit or, any other lost or hurting animal. Jasmine would just peer into the box or cage and, when and where possible, deliver a welcoming lick.

Geoff relates one of the early incidents. "We had two puppies that had been abandoned by a nearby railway line. One was a Lakeland Terrier cross and another was a Jack Russell Doberman cross. They were tiny when they arrived at the centre, and Jasmine approached them and grabbed one by the scruff of the neck in her mouth and put him on the settee. Then she fetched the other one and sat down with them, cuddling them."

"But she is like that with all of our animals, even the rabbits. She takes all the stress out of them, and it helps them to not only feel close to her, but to settle into their new surroundings. She has done the same with the fox and badger cubs, she licks the rabbits and guinea pigs, and even lets the birds perch on the bridge of her nose."

Jasmine, the timid, abused, deserted waif, became the animal sanctuary's resident surrogate mother, a role for which she might have been born. The list of orphaned and abandoned youngsters she has cared for comprises five fox cubs, four badger cubs, fifteen chicks, eight guinea pigs, two stray puppies and fifteen rabbits - and one roe deer fawn. Tiny Bramble, eleven weeks old, was found semi-conscious in a field. Upon arrival at the sanctuary, Jasmine cuddled up to her to keep her warm, and then went into the full foster-mum role. Jasmine the greyhound showers Bramble the roe deer with affection, and makes sure nothing is matted.

"They are inseparable," says Geoff. "Bramble walks between her legs, and they keep kissing each other. They walk together round the sanctuary. It's a real treat to see them."

Jasmine will continue to care for Bramble until she is old enough to be returned to woodland life. When that happens, Jasmine will not be lonely. She will be too busy showering love and affection on the next orphan or victim of abuse.
Picture of Jasmine and her friends

Pictured from the left are: "Toby", a stray Lakeland dog; "Bramble", orphaned roe deer; "Buster", a stray Jack Russell; a dumped rabbit; "Sky", an injured barn owl; and "Jasmine", with a mother's heart doing best what a caring mother would do...and such is the order of God's Creation.

And, just in case you wondered, http://www.snopes.com/photos/animals/jasmine.asp has verified the truth of this wonderful story and the reality of these photographs which accompany the story - so you can pass this story on, and help make someone else's day to be just a little brighter!

From the heart and lips of Corrie Ten Boom

Worry does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow; it empties today of its strength."

Never be afraid to trust an unknown future to a known God."

"Hold everything in your hands lightly, otherwise it hurts when God pries your fingers open."

"If you look at the world, you'll be distressed. If you look within, you'll be depressed. If you look at God you'll be at rest."

"Forgiveness is an act of the will, and the will can function regardless of the temperature of the heart."

"This is what the past is for! Every experience God gives us, every person He puts in our lives is the perfect preparation for the future that only He can see."

"Worrying is carrying tomorrow's load with today's strength- carrying two days at once. It is moving into tomorrow ahead of time. Worrying doesn't empty tomorrow of its sorrow, it empties today of its strength."

"What wings are to a bird, and sails to a ship, so is prayer to the soul."

"Any concern too small to be turned into a prayer is too small to be made into a burden."

"It is not my ability, but my response to God's ability, that counts."

"Happiness isn't something that depends on our surroundings...It's something we make inside ourselves."

"Some knowledge is too heavy...you cannot bear it...your Father will carry it until you are able."

"Trying to do the Lord's work in your own strength is the most confusing, exhausting, and tedious of all work. But when you are filled with the Holy Spirit, then the ministry of Jesus just flows out of you."

"There is no panic in Heaven! God has no problems, only plans."

"Even as the angry vengeful thoughts boiled through me, I saw the sin of them. Jesus Christ had died for this man; was I going to ask for more? Lord Jesus, I prayed, forgive me and help me to forgive him....Jesus, I cannot forgive him. Give me your forgiveness....And so I discovered that it is not on our
forgiveness any more than on our goodness that the world's healing hinges, but on His. When He tells us to love our enemies, He gives along with the command, the love itself."

"Don't bother to give God instructions; just report for duty."

"Dear Jesus...how foolish of me to have called for human help when You are here."

"There are no 'if's' in God's world. And no placess that are safer than other places. The center of His will is our only safety - let us pray that we may always know it!"

"And so seated next to my father in the train compartment, I suddenly asked, "Father, what is sexsin?"
He turned to look at me, as he always did when answering a question, but to my surprise he said nothing. At last he stood up, lifted his traveling case off the floor and set it on the floor. Will you carry it off the train, Corrie?" he said. I stood up and tugged at it. It was crammed with the watches and
spare parts he had purchased that morning.It's too heavy," I said. Yes," he said, "and it would be a pretty poor father who would ask his little girl to carry such a load. It's the same way, Corrie, with knowledge. Some knowledge is too heavy for children. When you are older and stronger, you can bear it. For now you must trust me to carry it for you."

"Every experience God gives us, every person He puts in our lives, is the perfect preparation for the future that only He can see."

"You can never learn that Christ is all you need, until Christ is all you have."

"Whenever we cannot love in the old, human way . . . God can give us the perfect way."

"Worry is a cycle of inefficient thoughts whirling around a center of fear."

"Do you know what hurts so very much? It's love. Love is the strongest force in the world, and when it is blocked that means pain. There are two things we can do when this happens. We can kill that love so that it stops hurting. But then of course part of us dies, too. Or we can ask God to open up another route for that love to travel."

"when we are powerless to do a thing, it is a great joy that we can come and step inside the ability of Jesus"

"God's viewpoint is sometimes different from ours - so different that we could not even guess at it unless He had given us a Book which tells us such things....In the Bible I learn that God values us not for our strenght or our brains but simply because He has made us."

"If God has shown us bad times ahead, it's enough for me that He knows about them. That's why He sometimes shows us things, you know - to tell us that this too is in His hands."

"Memories are the key not to the past, but to the future."

"The tree on the mountain takes whatever the weather brings. If it has any choice at all, it is in putting down roots as deeply as possible."---Each New Day"

"Mama's love had always been the kind that acted itself out with soup pot and sewing basket. But now that these things were taken away, the love seemed as whole as before. She sat in her chair at the window and loved us. She loved the people she saw in the street-- and beyond: her love took in the city, the land of Holland, the world. And so I learned that love is larger than the walls which shut it in."

"And our wise Father in heaven knows when we're going to need things too. Don't run out ahead of Him."

"Happiness isn't something that depends on our surroundings. It's something we make inside ourselves."

"There is no pit so deep, that God's love is not deeper still."
".....joy runs deeper than despair."

"Child, you have to learn to see things in the right proportions. Learn to see great things great and small things small."

"We are up against the unseen power that controls this dark world and the spiritual agents are from the very headquarters of evil. Therefore, we must wear the "whole armour of God," that we may be able to resist evil in its day of power, and that even when we have fought to a standstill, we may still stand our ground."

"How often it is a small, almost unconscious event that makes a turning point."

"And for all these people alike, the key to healing turned out to be the same. Each had a hurt he had to forgive."

"(on forgiveness) Didn't he and I stand together before an all seeing God convicted of the same murder? For I had murdered him with my heart and my tongue."

"In darkness God's truth shines most clear."

"Today I know that such memories are the key not to the past, but to the future. I know that the experiences of our lives, when we let God use them, become the mysterious and perfect preparation
for the work He will give us to do."

"Perhaps only when human effort had done it's best and failed, would God's power alone be free to work."

"Childhood scenes rushed back at me out of the night, strangely close and urgent. Today I know that such memories are the key not to the past, but to the future. I know that the experiences of our lives, when we let God use them, become the mysterious and perfect preparation for the work He will give us to do."

"Love is larger than the walls which shut it in."

"No hatred"

"Faith is like radar that sees through the fog -- the reality of things at a distance that the human eye cannot see."

"Never be afraid to trust your unknown futureto a Known God"

"You saw we could lose our lives for this child. I would consider that the greatest honor that could come to my family."

"All through the short afternoon they kept coming, the people who counted themselves Father's friends. Young and old, poor and rich, scholarly gentlemen and illiterate servant girls-only to
Father did it seem that they were all alike. That was Father's secret: not that he overlooked the differences in people; that he didn't know they were there."

"No pit is so deep that God's love is not deeper still."

Shoes in Church:

I showered and shaved................ I adjusted my tie.

I got there and sat................ In a pew just in time.

Bowing my head in prayer............ As I closed my eyes.

I saw the shoe of the man next to me....... Touching my own. I sighed.

With plenty of room on either side......... I thought, 'Why must our soles touch?'

It bothered me, his shoe touching mine.. But it didn't bother him much.

A prayer began: 'Our Father'............. I thought, 'This man with the shoes, has no pride.

They're dusty, worn, and scratched. Even worse, there are holes on the side!'

'Thank You for blessings,' the prayer went on.

The shoe man said................. A quiet 'Amen.'

I tried to focus on the prayer....... But my thoughts were on his shoes again..

Aren't we supposed to look our best. When walking through that door?

'Well, this certainly isn't it,' I thought, Glancing toward the floor.

Then the prayer was ended............ And the songs of praise began.

The shoe man was certainly loud..... Sounding proud as he sang.

His voice lifted the rafters........ His hands were raised high.

The Lord could surely hear.. The shoe man's voice from the sky.

It was time for the offering........ And what I threw in was steep.

I watched as the shoe man reached.... Into his pockets so deep.

I saw what was pulled out.......... What the shoe man put in.

Then I heard a soft 'clink' . As when silver hits tin.

The sermon really bored me.......... To tears, and that's no lie.

It was the same for the shoe man... For tears fell from his eyes.

At the end of the service........ As is the custom here.

We must greet new visitors, And show them all good cheer.

But I felt moved somehow........... And wanted to meet the shoe man.

So after the closing prayer........ I reached over and shook his hand.

He was old and his skin was dark..... And his hair was truly a mess.....

But I thanked him for coming.......... For being our guest...

He said, 'My names' Charlie............ I'm glad to meet you, my friend.'

There were tears in his eyes......... But he had a large, wide grin..

'Let me explain,' he said............. Wiping tears from his eyes.

'I've been coming here for months...... And you're the first to say 'Hi.''

'I know that my appearance...........'Is not like all the rest.

'But I really do try....................'To always look my best.'

'I always clean and polish my shoes...'Before my very long walk.

'But by the time I get here........'They're dirty and dusty, like chalk.'

My heart filled with pain............ And I swallowed to hide my tears.

As he continued to apologize.......... For daring to sit so near

He said, 'When I get here............'I know I must look a sight.

'But I thought if I could touch you....'Then maybe our souls might unite.'
I was silent for a moment............. Knowing whatever was said

Would pale in comparison.... I spoke from my heart, not my head.

'Oh, you've touched me,' I said.......'And taught me, in part;

'That the best of any man..............'Is what is found in his heart.'

The rest, I thought,............... This shoe man will never know.

Like just how thankful I really am.... That his dirty old shoe touched my soul

Anonymous 

Step by step
We climb day by day,
Closer to God
With each prayer we pray.

For the cry of the heart
Offered in prayer,
Becomes just another
Spiritual stair

In the heavenly staircase
Leading us to
A beautiful place
Where we live anew.

So never give up
For it's worth the climb,
To live forever
In endless time,

Where the soul of man
Is safe and free,
To live in love
Through eternity!

~ Helen Steiner Rice

Nuggets of Truth and Wisdom

1] Prayer is not a "spare wheel" that you pull out when in trouble; it is a "steering wheel" that directs us in the right path throughout life.

2] Do you know why a car's WINDSHIELD is so large & the rear view mirror is so small? Because our PAST is not as important as our FUTURE. So, look ahead and move on.

3] Friendship is like a BOOK. It takes few seconds to burn, but it takes years to write.

4] All things in life are temporary. If going well enjoy it, they will not last forever. If going wrong don't worry, they can't last long either.

5] Old friends are like Gold! New friends are Diamonds! If you get a Diamond, don't forget the Gold! Because to hold a Diamond, you always need a base of Gold!

6] Often when we lose hope and think this is the end, GOD smiles from above and says, "Relax, sweetheart, it's just a bend, not the end!

7] When GOD solves your problems, you have faith in HIS abilities; when GOD doesn't solve your problems HE has faith in your abilities.

8] A blind person asked St. Anthony: "Can there be anything worse than losing eye sight?" He replied: "Yes, losing your vision."

9] When you pray for others, God listens to you and blesses them; and sometimes, when you are safe and happy, remember that someone has prayed for you.

10] WORRYING does not take away tomorrow's TROUBLES; it takes away today's PEACE.

A Baby's Hug

We were the only family with children in the restaurant. I sat Erik in a high chair and noticed everyone was quietly sitting and talking. Suddenly, Erik squealed with glee and said, 'Hi.' He pounded his fat baby hands on the high chair tray.

His eyes were crinkled in laughter and his mouth was bared in a toothless grin, as he wriggled and giggled with merriment.

I looked around and saw the source of his merriment. It was a man whose pants were baggy with a zipper at half-mast and his toes poked out of would-be shoes. His shirt was dirty and his hair was uncombed and unwashed. His whiskers were too short to be called a beard and his nose was so varicose it looked like a road map.

We were too far from him to smell, but I was sure he smelled. His hands waved and flapped on loose wrists. "Hi there, baby; hi there, big boy. I see ya, buster," the man said to Erik.

My husband and I exchanged looks, "What do we do?"

Erik continued to laugh and answer, "Hi."

Everyone in the restaurant noticed and looked at us and then at the man. The old geezer was creating a nuisance with my beautiful baby.

Our meal came and the man began shouting from across the room, "Do ya patty cake?

Do you know peek-a-boo? Hey, look, he knows peek-a-boo."

Nobody thought the old man was cute. He was obviously drunk. My husband and I were embarrassed.

We ate in silence; all except for Erik, who was running through his repertoire for the admiring skid-row bum, who in turn, reciprocated with his cute comments.

We finally got through the meal and headed for the door. My husband went to pay the check and told me to meet him in the parking lot. The old man sat poised between me and the door. "Lord, just let me out of here before he speaks to me or Erik," I prayed. As I drew closer to the man, I turned my back trying to sidestep him and avoid any air he might be breathing. As I did, Erik leaned over my arm, reaching with both arms in a baby's "pick-me-up" position. Before I could stop him, Erik had propelled himself from my arms to the man.

Suddenly a very old smelly man and a very young baby consummated their love and kinship. Erik in an act of total trust, love, and submission laid his tiny head upon the man's ragged shoulder. The man's eyes closed, and I saw tears hover beneath his lashes. His aged hands full of grime, pain, and hard labor, cradled my baby's bottom and stroked his back. No two beings have ever loved so deeply for so short a time.

I stood awestruck. The old man rocked and cradled Erik in his arms and his eyes opened and set squarely on mine. He said in a firm commanding voice, "You take care of this baby."

Somehow I managed, "I will," from a throat that contained a stone.

He pried Erik from his chest, lovingly and longingly, as though he were in pain. I received my baby, and the man said, "God bless you, ma'am, you've given me my Christmas gift."

I said nothing more than a muttered thanks.
With Erik in my arms, I ran for the car. My husband was wondering why I was crying and holding Erik so tightly, and why I was saying, "My God, my God, forgive me."

I had just witnessed Christ's love shown through the innocence of a tiny child who saw no sin, who made no judgment; a child who saw a soul, and a mother who saw a suit of clothes.

I was a Christian who was blind, holding a child who was not. I felt it was God asking, "Are you willing to share your son for a moment?" when He shared His for all eternity.

The ragged old man, unwittingly, had reminded me, "To enter the Kingdom of God , we must become as little children."

Sometimes, it takes a child to remind us of what is really important.

♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥

It happened every Friday evening, almost without fail, when the sun resembled a giant orange and was starting to dip into the blue ocean.

Old Ed came strolling along the beach to his favorite pier.. Clutched in his bony hand was a bucket of shrimp. Ed walks out to the end of the pier, where it seems he almost has the world to himself. The glow of the sun is a golden bronze now.

Everybody's gone, except for a few joggers on the beach. Standing out on the end of the pier, Ed is alone with his thoughts...and his bucket of shrimp.

Before long, however, he is no longer alone. Up in the sky a thousand white dots come screeching and squawking, winging their way toward that lanky frame standing there on the end of the pier.

Before long, dozens of seagulls have enveloped him, their wings fluttering and flapping wildly. Ed stands there tossing shrimp to the hungry birds. As he does, if you listen closely, you can hear him say with a smile, 'Thank you. Thank you.'

In a few short minutes the bucket is empty. But Ed doesn't leave.

He stands there lost in thought, as though transported to another time and place.

When he finally turns around and begins to walk back toward the beach, a few of the birds hop along the pier with him until he gets to the stairs, and then they, too, fly away. And old Ed quietly makes his way down to the end of the beach and on home.

If you were sitting there on the pier with your fishing line in the water, Ed might seem like 'a funny old duck,' as my dad used to say. Or, 'a guy that's a sandwich shy of a picnic,' as my kids might say. To onlookers, he's just another old codger, lost in his own weird world, feeding the seagulls with a bucket full of shrimp.

To the onlooker, rituals can look either very strange or very empty. They can seem altogether unimportant ....maybe even a lot of nonsense.

Old folks often do strange things, at least in the eyes of Boomers and Busters.

Most of them would probably write Old Ed off, down there in Florida . That's too bad. They'd do well to know him better.

His full name: Eddie Rickenbacker. He was a famous hero back in World War II. On one of his flying missions across the Pacific, he and his seven-member crew went down. Miraculously, all of the men survived, crawled out of their plane, and climbed into a life raft.

Captain Rickenbacker and his crew floated for days on the rough waters of the Pacific. They fought the sun. They fought sharks. Most of all, they fought hunger. By the eighth day their rations ran out. No food. No water. They were hundreds of miles from land and no one knew where they were.

They needed a miracle. That afternoon they had a simple devotional service and prayed for a miracle. They tried to nap Eddie leaned back and pulled his military cap over his nose. Time dragged. Al l he could hear was the slap of the waves against the raft.

Suddenly, Eddie felt something land on the top of his cap. It was a seagull!

Old Ed would later describe how he sat perfectly still, planning his next move. With a flash of his hand and a squawk from the gull, he managed to grab it and wring its neck.. He tore the feathers off, and he and his starving crew made a meal - a very slight meal for eight men - of it. Then they used the intestines for bait.. With it, they caught fish, which gave them food and more bait......and the cycle continued. With that simple survival technique, they were able to endure the rigors of the sea until they were found and rescued (after 24 days at sea...).

Eddie Rickenbacker lived many years beyond that ordeal, but he never forgot the sacrifice of that first lifesaving seagull.. And he never stopped saying, 'Thank you.' That's why almost every Friday night he would walk to the end of the pier with a bucket full of shrimp and a heart full of gratitude.

Reference: (Max Lucado, In The Eye of the Storm, pp..221, 225-226)

PS: Eddie started Eastern Airlines.

And now you know... the rest of the story.

Daily, I have to remember who I was, where I came from and, most importantly, how I am to consider all others. The clothes on their backs, or the car that they drive, or the house that they live in does not define who they are at all; so, it is how we treat our fellow man that identifies who we are.

According to God's Word: I am to consider all others as more important than my self. I am to never to do anything out of selfishness or empty conceit; and I am to love my neighbor as myself; but, I am to love my spiritual brothers and sisters as Jesus loved me. Tom

Carl was a quiet man. He didn't talk much.

He would always greet you with a big smile and a firm handshake.

Even after living in our neighborhood for over 50 years,

no one could really say they knew him very well.

Before his retirement, he took the bus to work each morning.

The lone sight of him walking down the street often worried us.

He had a slight limp from a bullet wound received in WWII.

Watching him, we worried that although he had survived WWII,
he may not make it through our changing uptown neighborhood with its ever-increasing random violence, gangs, and drug activity.

When he saw the flyer at our local church asking for volunteers for caring for the gardens behind the minister's residence, he responded in his characteristically unassuming manner. Without fanfare, he just signed up.

He was well into his 87th year when the very thing we had always feared finally happened.

He was just finishing his watering for the day when three gang members approached him.

Ignoring their attempt to intimidate him, he simply asked,

"Would you like a drink from the hose?"

The tallest and toughest-looking of the three said, "Yeah, sure," with a malevolent little smile.

As Carl offered the hose to him, the other two grabbed Carl's arm, throwing him down.

As the hose snaked crazily over the ground, dousing everything in its way, Carl's assailants stole his retirement watch and his wallet, and then fled.

Carl tried to get himself up, but he had been thrown down on his bad leg.

He lay there trying to gather himself as the minister came running to help him.

Although the minister had witnessed the attack from his window, he couldn't get there fast enough to stop it.

"Carl, are you okay? Are you hurt?" the minister kept asking as he helped Carl to his feet.

Carl just passed a hand over his brow and sighed, shaking his head.

"Just some punk kids. I hope they'll wise-up someday."

His wet clothes clung to his slight frame as he bent to pick up the hose.

He adjusted the nozzle again and started to water.

Confused and a little concerned, the minister asked, "Carl, what are you doing?"

"I've got to finish my watering. It's been very dry lately," came the calm reply.

Satisfying himself that Carl
really was all right, the minister could only marvel.

Carl was a man from a different time and place.

A few weeks later the three returned. Just as before their threat was unchallenged.

Carl again offered them a drink from his hose.

This time they didn't rob him.

They wrenched the hose from his hand and drenched him head to foot in the icy water.

When they had finished their humiliation of him, they sauntered off down the street, throwing catcalls and curses, falling over one another laughing at the hilarity of what they had just done.

Carl just watched them.

Then he turned toward the warmth giving sun, picked up his hose, and went on with his watering.

The summer was quickly fading into fall Carl was doing some tilling when he was startled by the sudden approach of someone behind him.

He stumbled and fell into some evergreen branches.

As he struggled to regain
his footing, he turned to see the tall leader of his summer tormentors reaching down for him. He braced himself for the expected attack.

"Don't worry old man, I'm not gonna hurt you this time."

The young man spoke softly, still offering the tattooed and scarred hand to Carl. As he helped Carl get up, the man pulled a crumpled bag from his pocket and handed it to Carl.

"What's this?"

Carl asked. "It's your stuff," the man explained. "It's your stuff back.

Even the money in your wallet." "I don't understand," Carl said. "Why would you help me now?"

The man shifted his feet, seeming embarrassed and ill at ease. "I learned something from you," he said. "I ran with that gang and hurt people like you we picked you because you were old and we knew we could do it But every time we came and did something to you, instead of yelling and fighting back, you tried to give us a drink.
You didn't hate us for hating you. You kept showing love against our hate."

He stopped for a moment. "I couldn't sleep after we stole your stuff, so here it is back."

He paused for another awkward moment, not knowing what more there was to say. "That bag's my way of saying thanks for straightening me out, I guess." And with that, he walked off down the street.

Carl looked down at the sack in his hands and gingerly opened it. He took out his retirement watch and put it back on his wrist. Opening his wallet, he checked for his wedding photo. He gazed for a moment at the young bride that still smiled back at him from all those years ago.

He died one cold day after Christmas that winter. Many people attended his funeral in spite of the weather.

In particular the minister noticed a tall young man that he didn't know sitting quietly in a distant corner of the church.

The minister spoke of Carl's garden
as a lesson in life.

In a voice made thick with unshed tears, he said, "Do your best and make your garden as beautiful as you can. We will never forget Carl and his garden."

The following spring another flyer went up. It read: "Person needed to care for Carl's garden."

The flyer went unnoticed by the busy parishioners until one day when a knock was heard at the minister's office door.

Opening the door, the minister saw a pair of scarred and tattooed hands holding the flyer. "I believe this is my job, if you'll have me," the young man said.

The minister recognized him as the same young man who had returned the stolen watch and wallet to Carl.

He knew that Carl's kindness had turned this man's life around. As the minister handed him the keys to the garden shed, he said, "Yes, go take care of Carl's garden and honor him."

The man went to work and, over the next several years, he tended the flowers and vegetables just as Carl had done.

During that time, he went to college, got married, and became a prominent member of the community. But he never forgot his promise to Carl's memory and kept the garden as beautiful as he thought Carl would have kept it.

One day he approached the new minister and told him that he couldn't care for the garden any longer. He explained with a shy and happy smile, "My wife just had a baby boy last night, and she's bringing him home on Saturday."

"Well, congratulations!" said the minister, as he was handed the garden shed keys. "That's wonderful! What's the baby's name?"

"Carl," he replied.

That's the whole gospel message simply stated.

Slow Dance

This is a poem supposedly written by a terminally ill young girl in a New York Hospital, a teenager with cancer.

SLOW DANCE

Have you ever watched kids
On a merry-go-round?
Or listened to the rain
Slapping on the ground?

Ever followed a butterfly's
Erratic flight?
Or gazed at the sun
Into the fading night?

You better slow down.
Don't dance so fast.
Time is short.
The music won't last.

Do you run through each day
On the fly?
When you ask How are you?
Do you hear the reply?

When the day is done
Do you lie in your bed
With the next hundred chores
Running through your head?

You'd better slow down
Don't dance so fast.
Time is short.
The music won't last.

Ever told your child,
We'll do it tomorrow?
And in your haste,
Not see his sorrow?

Ever lost touch,
Let a friendship die,
Cause you never had time
To call and say,'Hi'

You'd better slow down.
Don't dance so fast.
Time is short.
The music won't last..

When you run so fast
To get somewhere
You miss half the fun
Of getting there.

When you worry and hurry
through your day,
It is like an unopened gift....
Just thrown away.

Life is not a race.
Do take it slower
Hear the music
Before the song is over.

"Information Please"

When I was a young boy, my father had one of the first telephones in our neighborhood. I remember the polished, old case fastened to the wall. The shiny receiver hung on the side of the box. I was too little to reach the telephone, but used to listen with fascination when my mother talked to it.

Then I discovered that somewhere inside the wonderful device lived an amazing person. Her name was "Information Please" and there was nothing she did not know. Information Please could supply anyone's number and the correct time.

My personal experience with the genie-in-a-bottle came one day while my mother was visiting a neighbor. Amusing myself at the tool bench in the basement, I whacked my finger with a hammer, the pain was terrible, but there seemed no point in crying because there was no one home to give sympathy.

I walked around the house sucking my throbbing finger, finally arriving at the stairway. The telephone! Quickly, I ran for the footstool in the parlor and dragged it to the landing. Climbing up, I unhooked the receiver in the parlor and held it to my ear.

"Information, please" I said into the Mouthpiece just above my head. A click or two and a small clear voice spoke into my ear.

"Information."

"I hurt my finger..." I wailed into the phone, the tears came readily enough now that I had an audience.

"Isn't your mother home?" came the question.

"Nobody's home but me," I blubbered.

"Are you bleeding?" the voice asked.

"No," I replied. "I hit my finger with the hammer and it hurts."

"Can you open the icebox?" she asked.

I said I could.

"Then chip off a little bit of ice and hold it to your finger," said the voice..

After that, I called "Information Please" for everything.. I asked her for Help with my geography, and she told me where Philadelphia was. She helped me with my math. She told me my pet chipmunk that I had caught in the park just the day before, would eat fruit and nuts. Then, there was the time Petey, our pet canary, died.

I called, "Information Please," and told her the sad story. She listened, and then said things grown-ups say to soothe a child. But I was not consoled. I asked her, "Why is it that birds should sing so beautifully and bring joy to all families, only to end up as a heap of feathers on the bottom of a cage?"

She must have sensed my deep concern, for she said quietly, " Wayne, always remember that there are other worlds to sing in."

Somehow I felt better.

Another day I was on the telephone, "Information Please."

"Information," said in the now familiar voice. "How do I spell fix?" I asked.

All this took place in a small town in the Pacific Northwest. When I was nine years old, we moved across the country to Boston. I missed my friend very much. "Information Please" belonged in that old wooden box back home and I somehow never thought of trying the shiny new phone that sat on the table in the hall. As I grew into my teens, the memories of those childhood conversations never really left me.

Often, in moments of doubt and perplexity I would recall the serene sense of security I had then. I appreciated now how patient, understanding, and kind she was to have spent her time on a little boy.

A few years later, on my way west to college, my plane put down in Seattle . I had about a half-hour or so between planes. I spent 15 minutes or so on the phone with my sister, who lived there now. Then without thinking what I was doing, I dialed my hometown operator and said, "Information Please."

Miraculously, I heard the small, clear voice I knew so well.

"Information."

I hadn't planned this, but I heard myself saying,
"Could you please tell me how to spell fix?"

There was a long pause. Then came the soft spoken answer, "I guess your finger must have healed by now."

I laughed, "So it's really you," I said. "I wonder if you have any
Idea how much you meant to me during that time?"

I wonder," she said, "if you know how much your call meant to me.

I never had any children and I used to look forward to your calls."

I told her how often I had thought of her over the years and I asked if I could call her again when I came back to visit my sister.

"Please do", she said. "Just ask for Sally."

Three months later I was back in Seattle .

This time a different voice answered, "Information."

I asked for Sally..

"Are you a friend?" she said.

"Yes, a very old friend," I answered.

"I'm sorry to have to tell you this," She said. "Sally had been working part time the last few years because she was sick. She died five weeks ago."

Before I could hang up, she said, "Wait a minute, did you say your name was Wayne ?" "

Yes." I answered.

"Well, Sally left a message for you. She wrote it down in case you called. Let me read it to you."

The note said, "Tell him there are other worlds to sing in. He'll know what I mean."

I thanked her and hung up. I knew what Sally meant.

Never underestimate the impression you may make on others..

Whose life have you touched today?

Why not copy, paste and pass this on? And add this little prayer, " May God lift you up on eagle's wings. May you find the joy and peace for which you long, and may you always remember, life is a journey... NOT a guided tour.

Answered Prayer
December 25, 2010 Human Events

Washington - By REP. LOUIE GOHMERT
Mother had become so very impulsive. You never knew what she might do next. This brilliant woman in her younger years had put herself through Baylor University in less than three years while working full-time, was a member of an Honor Society, and had spent most of her professional life as an eighth-grade English teacher.

She had prided herself on being able to solve almost any puzzle, answer most any question, and now it was she who was puzzled by lots of things. She got disoriented, and was going crazy thinking she might be going crazy. In fact, a local doctor in our small town in east Texas told Dad if she got much worse, she might need to be put in a home or institution. That drove her even crazier. Amidst the other perplexing conditions, she thought she was not hearing out of one ear, but that was a minor thing so she did not pursue answers for a long time.

Eventually, she decided to go the 60 miles to Longview to have a hearing checkup with an ear, nose and throat specialist named Dr. Norman, whose only other contact with our family was about 14 years earlier when he diagnosed a hearing problem for me when I was 8 years old. He ran tests and did X-rays of Mother, but was baffled. He said she had lost most of her hearing in her right ear, and he expected to find a small tumor in her inner ear but the X-rays showed there was no tumor at the normal spot. She had a hearing loss, but he had no idea why. She went home feeling that at least there was something wrong with her that was not psychosomatic.

Nonetheless, her depression, anxiety, loss of balance, impetuosity, all kept getting worse, and she knew it. As fall was heading toward Christmas, mother was heading for disaster. That was what she feared, as did my father, my older sister, Susan, my two younger brothers, David and Bill, along with me. Several months after her office visit with Dr. Norman, my brilliant mother was overwhelmed in a way none of us could help. This smart woman who read all of us Bible stories from our earliest days, who loved to recite poetry, jokes and stories, was now having trouble from time to time remembering some of those -- and it was not just age taking its toll on this 50-year-old mother.

One night my mother could not sleep, which was not unusual, but she got on her knees to pray. This was a regular habit for this staunch Christian, a Southern Baptist in fact. But that night it was in complete desperation and hopelessness. She prayed in essence: "Lord, You know I would not take my own life, but I cannot live another day like this. I cannot go on. You have to do something. Please help me!"

My youngest brother, Bill, was the only sibling still living at home. He said he awoke, got up, saw a light on, and went to the living room. He saw mom and worriedly asked, "Mother, are you all right?"

She said, "Yes, son. I'm fine. Go on back to bed." He did. She prayed a while longer, eventually drifting down the hall to fall in bed beside our father. The next morning, Mother, not having to teach that day, slept late until the phone rang. Since Dad was already at work, Mother answered. It was the ear doctor who had seen her once many months before but with whom there had been no contact since. "Mrs. Gohmert, this is Dr. Norman over in Longview. I woke up in the middle of the night thinking about you, and just wanted to call and see if your problems had gotten any better."

Mother told him, no, that she actually thought she was worse. He said that is what he had awakened thinking, and he wanted to send her over to a neurologist friend of his at Baylor Hospital in Dallas and just let him run tests until he figured out what was wrong.

Mother and Dad did not have a lot of money then, but they readily agreed to do just that. Dr. Norman was not a friend of the family, had not seen Mother in many months, did not have common friends with our family, but he was providentially usable and awoke with Mother on his mind!

Almost a week of testing and nothing showed until they tried a new machine (at that time) called a CT Scan. It revealed a small, walnut-sized tumor just inside the skull above her left ear. Mother was elated when she told us the results. We were all heartsick, but not Mother. She was so excited, because she knew it was a physical problem; she wasn't just going crazy. What was more, she knew as we all did -- God had answered her prayer. From there, she could handle whatever happened.

The doctor at Baylor, concerned about the sensitive area of the brain in which the tumor was located, referred her to a neurosurgeon friend at the Mayo Clinic. Again, she and dad did what they had to, with surgery scheduled shortly after Christmas. When the neurosurgeon went in, he found the tumor was more grapefruit size, involved a great deal of the brain, and could not be removed entirely. We were told later it would grow back in maybe a year, maybe 20, no one would know. Mom felt that was OK, too.

And through it all, she found her amazing sense of humor again as well. In fact, her surgeon was quite concerned that he had traumatized nerves or parts of her brain that could have materially affected her abilities. He told the nurses it was imperative that he watch her come out from under the anesthesia so he would have a better idea of the damage that might have occurred. He was alerted, and was standing at the foot of mother's bed when she opened her eyes, which then met his eyes. He asked, "Do you know who I am?" Mother looked at him for a moment and then said, "If you don't know who you are, you're worse off than I am!" Mother still had it.

It took 15 years for the tumor to grow back big enough to take her, and the last few years were tough. Half of her face did sag a bit, causing many to think Mother might have had a stroke. But that too did not matter as much as the fact that Mother's prayer had been answered. She, and we all, had a God who listened to our prayers, and answered them.

Christmas was rather special that year. It was before her surgery, so none of us knew what lay ahead for Mother or our family from there. But, everyone seemed a little closer, loved a little deeper, hugged a little longer, had fewer squabbles, and appreciated everything a little more. Two thousand years after God gave us Jesus, He was and is still in the business of answering prayer. Emmanuel -- our God is with us.
Psalms 116:1-2: "I love the Lord, because He has heard my voice and my supplications; because He has inclined His ear to me, therefore I will call upon Him as long as I live."

Merry Christmas Lord Jesus!

The old man sat in his gas station on a cold Christmas Eve. He hadn't been anywhere in years since his wife had passed away. It was just another day to him. He didn't hate Christmas, just couldn't find a reason to celebrate. He was sitting there looking at the snow that had been falling for the last hour and wondering what it was all about when the door opened and a homeless man stepped through.

Instead of throwing the man out, Old George as he was known by his customers, told the man to come and sit by the heater and warm up. "Thank you, but I don't mean to intrude," said the stranger. "I see you're busy, I'll just go."

"Not without something hot in your belly." George said.

He turned and opened a wide mouth Thermos and handed it to the stranger. "It ain't much, but it's hot and tasty. Stew ... Made it myself. When you're done, there's coffee and it's fresh."

Just at that moment he heard the "ding" of the driveway bell. "Excuse me, be right back," George said. There in the driveway was an old '53 Chevy. Steam was rolling out of the front. The driver was panicked. "Mister can you help me!" said the driver, with a deep Spanish accent. "My wife is with child and my car is broken." George opened the hood. It was bad. The block looked cracked from the cold, the car was dead.

"You ain't going in this thing," George said as he turned away.

"But Mister, please help ..." The door of the office closed behind George as he went inside. He went to the office wall and got the keys to his old truck, and went back outside. He walked around the building, opened the garage, started the truck and drove it around to where the couple was waiting. "Here, take my truck," he said. "She ain't the best thing you ever looked at, but she runs real good."

George helped put the woman in the truck and watched as it sped off into the night. He turned and walked back inside the office. "Glad I gave 'em the truck, their tires were shot too. That 'ol truck has brand new ." George thought he was talking to the stranger, but the man had gone. The Thermos was on the desk, empty, with a used coffee cup beside it. "Well, at least he got something in his belly," George thought.

George went back outside to see if the old Chevy would start. It cranked slowly, but it started. He pulled it into the garage where the truck had been. He thought he would tinker with it for something to do. Christmas Eve meant no customers. He discovered the the block hadn't cracked, it was just the bottom hose on the radiator. "Well, shoot, I can fix this," he said to
himself. So he put a new one on.

"Those tires ain't gonna get 'em through the winter either." He took the snow treads off of his wife's old Lincoln. They were like new and he wasn't going to drive the car anyway.

As he was working, he heard shots being fired. He ran outside and beside a police car an officer lay on the cold ground. Bleeding from the left shoulder, the officer moaned, "Please help me."

George helped the officer inside as he remembered the training he had received in the Army as a medic. He knew the wound needed attention. "Pressure to stop the bleeding," he thought. The uniform company had been there that morning and had left clean shop towels. He used those and duct tape to bind the wound. "Hey, they say duct tape can fix anythin'," he said, trying to make the policeman feel at ease.

"Something for pain," George thought. All he had was the pills he used for his back. "These ought to work." He put some water in a cup and gave the policeman the pills. "You hang in there, I'm going to get you an ambulance."

The phone was dead. "Maybe I can get one of your buddies on that there talk box out in your car." He went out only to find that a bullet had gone into the dashboard destroying the two way radio.

He went back in to find the policeman sitting up. "Thanks," said the officer. "You could have left me there. The guy that shot me is still in the area."

George sat down beside him, "I would never leave an injured man in the Army and I ain't gonna leave you." George pulled back the bandage to check for bleeding. "Looks worse than what it is. Bullet passed right through 'ya. Good thing it missed the important stuff though. I think with time your gonna be right as rain."

George got up and poured a cup of coffee. "How do you take it?" he asked.

"None for me," said the officer.

"Oh, yer gonna drink this. Best in the city. Too bad I ain't got no donuts." The officer laughed and winced at the same time.

The front door of the office flew open. In burst a young man with a gun. "Give me all your cash! Do it now!" the young man yelled. His hand was shaking and George could tell that he had never done anything like this before.

"That's the guy that shot me!" exclaimed the officer.

"Son, why are you doing this?" asked George, "You need to put the cannon away. Somebody else might get hurt."

The young man was confused. "Shut up old man, or I'll shoot you, too. Now give me the cash!"

The cop was reaching for his gun. "Put that thing away," George said to the cop, "we got one too many in here now."

He turned his attention to the young man. "Son, it's Christmas Eve. If you need money, well then, here. It ain't much but it's all I got. Now put that pea shooter away."

George pulled $150 out of his pocket and handed it to the young man, reaching for the barrel of the gun at the same time. The young man released his grip on the gun, fell to his knees and began to cry. "I'm not very good at this am I? All I wanted was to buy something for my wife and son," he went on. "I've lost my job, my rent is due, my car got repossessed last week."

George handed the gun to the cop. "Son, we all get in a bit of squeeze now and then. The road gets hard sometimes, but we make it through the best we can."

He got the young man to his feet, and sat him down on a chair across from the cop. "Sometimes we do stupid things." George handed the young man a cup of coffee. "Bein' stupid is one of the things that makes us human. Comin' in here with a gun ain't the answer. Now sit there and get warm and we'll sort this thing out."

The young man had stopped crying. He looked over to the cop. "Sorry I shot you. It just went off. I'm sorry officer."

"Shut up and drink your coffee " the cop said.

George could hear the sounds of sirens outside. A police car and an ambulance skidded to a halt. Two cops came through the door, guns drawn. "Chuck! You ok?" one of the cops asked the wounded officer.

"Not bad for a guy who took a bullet. How did you find me?"

"GPS locator in the car. Best thing since sliced bread. Who did this?" the other cop asked as he approached the young man.

Chuck answered him, "I don't know. The guy ran off into the dark. Just dropped his gun and ran."

George and the young man both looked puzzled at each other.

"That guy work here?" the wounded cop continued.

"Yep," George said, "just hired him this morning. Boy lost his job."

The paramedics came in and loaded Chuck onto the stretcher. The young man leaned over the wounded cop and whispered, "Why?"

Chuck just said, "Merry Christmas boy ... and you too, George, and thanks for everything."

"Well, looks like you got one doozy of a break there. That ought to solve some of your problems."

George went into the back room and came out with a box. He pulled out a ring box. "Here you go, something for the little woman. I don't think Martha would mind. She said it would come in handy some day."

The young man looked inside to see the biggest diamond ring he ever saw. "I can't take this," said the young man. "It means something to you."

"And now it means something to you," replied George. "I got my memories. That's all I need."

George reached into the box again. An airplane, a car and a truck appeared next. They were toys that the oil company had left for him to sell. "Here's something for that little man of yours."

The young man began to cry again as he handed back the $150 that the old man had handed him earlier.

"And what are you supposed to buy Christmas dinner with? You keep that too," George said. "Now git home to your family."

The young man turned with tears streaming down his face. "I'll be here in the morning for work, if that job offer is still good."

"Nope. I'm closed Christmas day," George said. "See ya the day after."

George turned around to find that the stranger had returned. "Where'd you come from? I thought you left?"

"I have been here. I have always been here," said the stranger. "You say you don't celebrate Christmas. Why?"

"Well, after my wife passed away, I just couldn't see what all the bother was. Puttin' up a tree and all seemed a waste of a good pine tree. Bakin' cookies like I used to with Martha just wasn't the same by myself and besides I was gettin' a little chubby."

The stranger put his hand on George's shoulder. "But you do celebrate the holiday, George. You gave me food and drink and warmed me when I was cold and hungry. The woman with child will bear a son and he will become a great doctor.

The policeman you helped will go on to save 19 people from being killed by terrorists. The young man who tried to rob you will make you a rich man and not take any for himself. "That is the spirit of the season and you keep it as good as any man."

George was taken aback by all this stranger had said. "And how do you know all this?" asked the old man.

"Trust me, George. I have the inside track on this sort of thing. And when your days are done you will be with Martha again."

The stranger moved toward the door. "If you will excuse me, George, I have to go now. I have to go home where there is a big celebration planned."

George watched as the old leather jacket and the torn pants that the stranger was wearing turned into a white robe. A golden light began to fill the room.

"You see, George ... it's My birthday. Merry Christmas."

George fell to his knees and replied, "Happy Birthday, Lord Jesus"

Merry Christmas!!

The Meaning of the Christmas Wreath
By Holley Gerth

Every Christmas wreath is more than just a decoration...

It's a special reminder of Jesus, the reason for our celebration.

The circle of a Christmas wreath is a never-ending ring,

A reminder of eternal love from our Lord and King.

The Christmas wreath is a sign of welcome, inviting all to enter in...

A reminder of Christ's invitation for all to come to Him.

The middle of a Christmas wreath is a bare and empty space,

A reminder of what life would be without Christ's love and grace.

So each time you see a Christmas wreath hanging from a door,

May your heart rejoice in the One that Christmas is truly for!

Putting the 'W' In Christmas Love

Each December, I vowed to make Christmas a calm and peaceful experience. I had cut back on nonessential obligations -- extensive card writing, endless baking, decorating, and even overspending. Yet still, I found myself exhausted, unable to appreciate the precious family moments, and of course, the true meaning of Christmas.

My son, Nicholas, was in kindergarten that year. It was an exciting season for a six-year-old. For weeks, he'd been memorizing songs for his school's "Winter Pageant." I didn't have the heart to tell him I'd be working the night of the production. Unwilling to miss his shining moment, I spoke with his teacher. She assured me there'd be a dress rehearsal the morning of the presentation. All parents unable to attend that evening were welcome to come then. Fortunately, Nicholas seemed happy with the compromise.

So, the morning of the dress rehearsal, I filed in ten minutes early, found a spot on the cafeteria floor and sat down. Around the room, I saw several other parents quietly scampering to their seats. As I waited, the students were led into the room. Each class, accompanied by their teacher, sat cross-legged on the floor. Then, each group, one by one, rose to perform their song.

Because the public school system had long stopped referring to the holiday as Christmas," I didn't expect anything other than fun, commercial entertainment - songs of reindeer, Santa Claus, snowflakes and good cheer. So, when my son's class rose to sing, "Christmas Love," I was slightly taken aback by its bold title.

Nicholas was aglow, as were all of his classmates, adorned in fuzzy mittens, red sweaters, and bright snowcaps upon their heads. Those in the front row-center stage -- held up large letters, one by one, to spell out the title of the song. As the class would sing "C is for Christmas," a child would hold up the letter C. Then, "H is for Happy," and on and on, until each child holding up his portion had presented the complete message, "Christmas Love."

The performance was going smoothly, until suddenly, we noticed her; a small, quiet, girl in the front row holding the letter "M" upside down -- totally unaware her letter "M" appeared as a "W." The audience of 1st through 6th graders snickered at this little one's mistake. But she had no idea they were laughing at her, so she stood tall, proudly holding her "W." Although many teachers tried to shush the children, the laughter continued until the last letter was raised, and we all saw it together. A hush came over the audience and eyes began to widen. In that instant, we understood the reason we were there, why we celebrated the holiday in the first place, why even in the chaos, there was a purpose for our festivities.

For when the last letter was held high, the message read loud and clear:

"C H R I S T W A S L O V E"

And, He still is.
Amazed in His presence...
Humbled by His love.

May each of you have a Merry Christmas as you reflect on His Amazing Love for each of us . . . . . !

Robby.....

At the prodding of my friends I am writing this story. My name is Mildred Honor and I am a former elementary school music teacher from Des Moines , Iowa .

I have always supplemented my income by teaching piano lessons - something I have done for over 30 years.

During those years I found that children have many levels of musical ability, and even though I have never had the pleasure of having a prodigy, I have taught some very talented students.

However, I have also had my share of what I call 'musically challenged' pupils - one such pupil being Robby..

Robby was 11 years old when his mother (a single mom) dropped him off for his first piano lesson. I prefer that students (especially boys) begin at an earlier age, which I explained to Robby. But Robby said that it had always been his mother's dream to hear him play the piano, so I took him as a student.

Well, Robby began his piano lessons and from the beginning I thought it was a hopeless endeavor. As much as Robby tried, he lacked the sense of tone and basic rhythm needed to excel. But he dutifully reviewed his scales and some elementary piano pieces that I require all my students to learn. Over the months he tried and tried while I listened and cringed and tried to encourage him.

At the end of each weekly lesson he would always say 'My mom's going to hear me play someday'. But to me, it seemed hopeless, he just did not have any inborn ability.

I only knew his mother from a distance as she dropped Robby off or waited in her aged car to pick him up. She always waved and smiled, but never dropped in.

Then one day Robby stopped coming for his lessons. I thought about calling him, but assumed that because of his lack of ability he had decided to pursue something else. I was also glad that he had stopped coming - he was a bad advertisement for my teaching!

Several weeks later I mailed a flyer recital to the students' homes. To my surprise, Robby (who had received a flyer) asked me if he could be in the recital. I told him that the recital was for current pupils and that because he had dropped out, he really did not qualify.

He told me that his mother had been sick and unable to take him to his piano lessons, but that he had been practicing. 'Please Miss Honor, I've just got to play' he insisted. I don't know what led me to allow him to play in the recital - perhaps it was his insistence or maybe something inside of me saying that it would be all right.

The night of the recital came and the high school gymnasium was packed with parents, relatives and friends. I put Robby last in the program, just before I was to come up and thank all the students and play a finishing piece. I thought that any damage he might do would come at the end of the program and I could always salvage his poor performance through my 'curtain closer'.

Well, the recital went off without a hitch, the students had been practicing and it showed. Then Robby came up on the stage. His clothes were wrinkled and his hair looked as though he had run an egg beater through it. 'Why wasn't he dressed up like the other students?' I thought. 'Why didn't his mother at least make him comb his hair for this special night?'

Robby pulled out the piano bench, and I was surprised when he announced that he had chosen to play Mozart's Concerto No. 21 in C Major. I was not prepared for what I heard next. His fingers were light on the keys, they even danced nimbly on the ivories. He went from pianissi mo to
fortissimo, from allegro to virtuoso; his suspended chords that Mozart demands were magnificent!

Never had I heard Mozart played so well by anyone his age.

After six and a half minutes he ended in a grand crescendo, and everyone was on their feet in wild applause! Overcome and in tears, I ran up on stage and put my arms around Robby in joy . 'I have never heard you play like that Robby, how did you do it?

Through the microphone Robby explained: 'Well, Miss Honor .... remember I told you that my mom was sick? Well, she actually had cancer and passed away this morning. And well ...... she was born deaf, so tonight was the first time she had ever heard me play, and I wanted to make it special.'

There wasn't a dry eye in the house that evening. As the people from Social Services led Robby from the stage to be placed in to foster care, I noticed that even their eyes were red and puffy. I thought to myself then how much richer my life had been for taking Robby as my pupil.

No, I have never had a prodigy, but that night I became a prodigy ....... of Robby. He was the teacher and I was the pupil, for he had taught me the meaning of perseverance and love and believing in yourself, and maybe even taking a chance on someone and you didn't know why.

Robby was killed years later in the senseless bombing of the Alfred P. Murray Federal Building in Oklahoma City in April, 1995.

And now, a footnote to the story. If you are thinking about coping, pasteing and forwarding this message, you are probably wondering which people on your address list aren't the 'appropriate' ones to receive this type of message. The person who wrote this believes that we can all make a difference!

BEING A MOTHER...

After 17 years of marriage, my wife wanted me to take another woman out to dinner and a movie. She said, 'I love you, but I know this other woman loves you and would love to spend some time with you.'

The other woman that my wife wanted me to visit was my MOTHER, who has been alone for 20 years, but the demands of my work and my two boys had made it possible to visit her only occasionally.

That night I called to invite her to go out for dinner and a movie.

'What's wrong, aren't you well,' she asked?

My mother is the type of woman who suspects that a late night call or a surprise invitation is a sign of bad news.

'I thought it would b e pleasant to spend some time with you,' I responded. 'Just the two of us.' She thought about it for a moment, and then said, 'I would like that very much.'

That Friday after work, as I drove over to pick her up I was a bit nervous. When I arrived at her house, I noticed that she, too, seemed to be nervous about our date. She waited in the door. She had curled her hair and was wearing the dress that she had worn to celebrate her last birthday on November 19th.

She smiled from a face that was as radiant as an angel's. 'I told my friends that I was going to go out with my son, and they were impressed,' she said, as she got into that new white van. 'They can't wait to hear about our date'.

We went to a restaurant that, although not elegant, was very nice and cozy. My mother took my arm as if she were the First Lady. After we sat down, I had to read the menu. Her eyes could only read large print. Half way through the entries, I lifted my eyes and saw Mom sitting there staring at me. A nostalgic smile was on her lips. 'It was I who used to have to read the menu when you were small,' she said. 'Then it's time that you relax and let me return the favor,' I responded.

During the dinner, we had an agreeable conversation- -nothing extraordinary but catching up on recent events of each other's life. We talked so much that we missed the movie.
As we arrived at her house later, she said, 'I'll go out with you again, but only if you let me invite you.'

I agreed.

'How was your dinner date ?' asked my wife when I got home.

'Very nice. Much more so than I could have imagined,' I answered.

A few days later, my mother died of a massive heart attack. It happened so suddenly that I didn't have a chance to do anything for her.

Some time later, I received an envelope with a copy of a restaurant receipt from the same place mother and I had dined. An attached note said: 'I paid this bill in advance. I wasn't sure that I could be there; but nevertheless, I paid for two plates - one for you and the other for your wife. You will never know what that night meant for me. I love you, son.'

At that moment, I understood the importance of saying in time: 'I LOVE YOU' and to give our loved ones the time that they deserve. Nothing in life is more important than your family. Give them the time they deserve, because these things cannot be put off till 'some other time.'

Somebody said it takes about six weeks to get back to normal after you've had a baby.... somebody doesn't know that once you're a mother, 'normal' is history.

Somebody said you learn how to be a mother by instinct . somebody never took a three-year-old shopping.

Somebody said being a mother is boring ...somebody never rode in a car driven by a teenager with a driver's permit. Somebody said if you're a'good' mother, your child will 'turn out good'.... somebody thinks a child comes with directions and a guarantee.

Somebody said you don't need an education to be a mother.... somebody never helped a fourth grader with his math.

Somebody said you can't love the second child as much as you love the first .... somebody doesn't have two children.

Somebody said the hardest part of being a mother is labor and delivery. Somebody who never watched her 'baby' get on the bus for the first day of kindergarten ... or on a plane headed for military 'boot camp.'

Somebody said a mother can stop worrying after her child gets married....somebody doesn't know that marriage adds a new son or daughter-in-law to a mother's heartstrings.

Somebody said a mother's job is done when her last child leaves home....somebody never had grandchildren.

Somebody said your mother knows you love her, so you don't need to tell her.... somebody isn't a mother.

Copy, paste and pass this along to all the 'mothers' in your life and to everyone who ever had a mother. This isn't just about being a mother; it's about appreciating the people in your life while you have them....no matter who that person is.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A Doll For His Sister

I was walking around in a store, when I saw a cashier hand this little boy some money back.
The boy couldn't have been more than 5 or 6 years old.
The Cashier said, 'I'm sorry, but you don't have enough money to buy this
doll.'
Then the little boy turned to the old woman next to him, ''Granny, are you
sure I don't have enough money?''
The old lady replied, ''You know that you don't have enough money to buy
this doll, my dear.''
Then she asked him to stay there for just 5 minutes while she went to look
around. She left quickly.
The little boy was still holding the doll in his hand.
Finally, I walked toward him and I asked him who he wished to give this doll
to.
'It's the doll that my sister loved most and wanted so much for Christmas .
She was sure that Santa Claus would bring it to her.'
I replied to him that maybe Santa Claus would bring it to her after all, and
not to worry.
But he replied to me sadly. 'No, Santa Claus can't bring it to her where she
is now. I have to give the doll to my mommy so that she can give it to my
sister when she goes there.'
His eyes were so sad while saying this, 'My Sister has gone to be with God.
Daddy says that Mommy is going to see God very soon too, so I thought that
she could take the doll with her to give it to my sister.''
My heart nearly stopped.
The little boy looked up at me and said, 'I told daddy to tell mommy not to
go yet. I need her to wait until I come back from the mall.' Then he showed
me a very nice photo of himself. He was laughing. He then told me 'I want
mommy to take my picture with her so she won't forget me.'
'I love my mommy and I wish she didn't have to leave me, but daddy says that
she has to go to be with my little sister.'
Then he looked again at the doll with sad eyes, very quietly.
I quickly reached for my wallet and said to the boy. 'Suppose we check
again, just in case you do have enough money for the doll!''
OK' he said, 'I hope I do have enough.' I added some of my money to his
without him seeing and we started to count it. There was enough for the doll
and even some spare money.
The little boy said, 'Thank you God for giving me enough money!'
Then he looked at me and added, 'I asked last night before I went to sleep
for God to make sure I had enough money to buy this doll, so that mommy
could give it to my sister. He heard me!''
'I also wanted to have enough money to buy a white rose for my mommy, but I
didn't dare to ask God for too much. But He gave me enough to buy the doll
and a white rose.''
'My mommy loves white roses.'
A few minutes later, the old lady returned and I left with my basket. I
finished my shopping in a totally different state of mind from when I
started.
I couldn't get the little boy out of my mind.
Then I remembered a local newspaper article two days ago, which mentioned a
drunk man in a truck, who hit a car occupied by a young woman and a little
girl. The little girl died right away, and the mother was left in a critical
state. The family had to decide whether to pull the plug on the
life-sustaining machine, because the young woman would not be able to
recover from the coma.
Was this the family of the little boy?
Two days after this encounter with the little boy, I read in the newspaper
that the young woman had passed away.
I couldn't stop myself as I bought a bunch of white roses and I went to the
funeral home where the body of the young woman was for people to see and
make last wishes before her burial.
She was there, in her coffin, holding a beautiful white rose in her hand
with the photo of the little boy and the doll placed over her chest.
I left the place, teary-eyed, feeling that my life had been changed forever.
The love that the little boy had for his mother and his sister is still, to
this day, hard to imagine, and in a fraction of a second, a drunk driver had
taken all this away from him
The quote of the month is by Jay Leno , 'With hurricanes, tornados, fires out
of control, mud slides, flooding, severe thunderstorms tearing up the
country from one end to the other, and with the threat of swine flu and
terrorist attacks, Are we sure this is a good time to take God out of the
Pledge of Allegiance ?'

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The Pastor's Son

Every Sunday afternoon, after the morning service at the church, the Pastor and his eleven year old son would go out into their town and hand out Gospel Tracts.

This particular Sunday afternoon, as it came time for the Pastor and his son to go to the streets with their tracts, it was very cold outside, as well as pouring rain.

The boy bundled up in his warmest and driest clothes and said, 'OK, dad, I'm ready.'

His Pastor dad asked, 'Ready for what?'

'Dad, it's time we gather our tracts together and go out.'

Dad responds, 'Son, it's very cold outside and it's pouring rain.'

The boy gives his dad a surprised look, asking, 'But Dad, aren't people still going to Hell, even though it's raining?'

Dad answers, 'Son, I am not going out in this weather.'

Despondently, the boy asks, 'Dad, can I go? Please?'

His father hesitated for a moment then said, 'Son, you can go. Here are the tracts, be careful son..'

Thanks Dad!'

And with that, he was off and out into the rain.. This eleven year old boy walked the streets of the town going door to door and handing everybody he met in the street a Gospel Tract .

After two hours of walking in the rain, he was soaking, bone-chilled wet and down to his VERY LAST TRACT. He stopped on a corner and looked for someone to hand a tract to, but the streets were totally deserted.

Then he turned toward the first home he saw and started up the sidewalk to the front door and rang the door bell. He rang the bell, but nobody answered.

He rang it again and again, but still no one answered. He waited but still no answer.

Finally, this eleven year old trooper turned to leave, but something stopped him.

Again, he turned to the door and rang the bell and knocked loudly on the door with his fist. He waited, something holding him there on the front porch!

He rang again and this time the door slowly opened.

Standing in the doorway was a very sad-looking elderly lady. She softly asked, 'What can I do for you, son?' With radiant eyes and a smile that lit up her world, this little boy said, 'Ma'am, I'm sorry if I disturbed you, but I just want to tell you that * JESUS REALLY DOES LOVE YOU and I came to give you my very last Gospel Tract which will tell you all about JESUS and His great LOVE.'
With that, he handed her his last tract and turned to leave.

She called to him as he departed. 'Thank you, son! And God Bless You!'

Well, the following Sunday morning in church Pastor Dad was in the pulpit. As the service began, he asked, 'Does anybody have testimony or want to say anything?'

Slowly, in the back row of the church, an elderly lady stood to her feet.

As she began to speak, a look of glorious radiance came from her face, 'No one in this church knows me. I've never been here before. You see, before last Sunday I was not a Christian. My husband passed on some time ago, leaving me totally alone in this world. Last Sunday, being a particularly cold and rainy day, it was even more so in my heart that I came to the end of the line where I no longer had any hope or will to live.

So I took a rope and a chair and ascended the stairway into the attic of my home. I fastened the rope securely to a rafter in the roof, then stood on the chair and fastened the other end of the rope around my neck. Standing on that chair, so lonely and broken-hearted I was about to leap off, when suddenly the loud ringing of my doorbell downstairs startled me. I thought, 'I'll wait a minute, and whoever it is will go away.'

I waited and waited, but the ringing doorbell seemed to get louder and more insistent, and then the person ringing also started knocking loudly. I thought to myself again, 'Who on earth could this be? Nobody ever rings my bell or comes to see me.' I loosened the rope from my neck and started for the front door, all the while the bell rang louder and louder.

When I opened the door and looked I could hardly believe my eyes, for there on my front porch was the most radiant and angelic little boy I had ever seen in my life. His SMILE, oh, I could never describe it to you!

The words that came from his mouth caused my heart that had long been dead, TO LEAP TO LIFE as he exclaimed with a cherub-like voice, 'Ma'am, I just came to tell you that JESUS REALLY DOES LOVE YOU .' Then he gave me this Gospel Tract that I now hold in my hand. As the little angel disappeared back out into the cold and rain, I closed my door and read slowly every word of this Gospel Tract. Then I went up to my attic to get my rope and chair. I wouldn't be needing them any more.

You see-- -I am now a Happy Child of the KING. Since the address of your church was on the back of this Gospel Tract, I have come here to personally say THANK YOU to God's little angel who came just in the nick of time and by so doing, spared my soul from an eternity in hell.'

There was not a dry eye in the church. And as shouts of praise and honor to THE KING resounded off the very rafters of the building, Pastor Dad descended from the pulpit to the front pew where the little angel was seated. He took his son in his arms and sobbed uncontrollably.

Probably no church has had a more glorious moment, and probably this universe has never seen a Papa that was more filled with love & honor for his son.... Except for One.

Blessed are your eyes for reading this message.

Don't let this message die, read it again and copy, paste and pass it to others. Heaven is for His people!
Remember, God's message CAN make the difference in the life of someone close to you.

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Twas the month before Christmas
When all through our land
Not a Christian was praying
Nor taking a stand.
See the PC Police had taken away,
The reason for Christmas -
No one could say.
The children were told by their schools not to sing,
About Shepherds and Wise Men and Angels and things.
It might hurt people's feelings, the teachers would say
December 25th is just another ‘Holiday'
Yet the shoppers were ready with cash, checks and credit
Pushing folks to the floor just to get it!
CDs from Madonna, an X BOX, an I-pod
Something was changing, something quite odd!
Retailers promoted Ramadan and Kwanzaa
In hopes to sell books by Franken & Fonda.
Now Target was hanging their trees upside down
At Lowe's the word Christmas - was no where to be found.
At K-Mart and Staples and Penny's and Sears
You won't hear the word Christmas; it won't touch your ears.
Inclusive, sensitive, Di-ver-si-ty
Are words that were used to intimidate me.
Now Daschle, Now Darden, Now Sharpton, Wolf Blitzen
On Boxer, on Rather, on Kerry, on Clinton !
At the top of the Senate, there arose such a clatter
To eliminate Jesus, in all public matter.
And we spoke not a word, as they insulted our faith
Forbidden to speak of salvation and grace
The true Gift of Christmas was exchanged and discarded
The reason for the season, was stopped before it started.
So as you celebrate 'Winter Break' under your 'Dream Tree'
Sipping your Starbucks, listen to me.
Choose your words carefully, choose what you say
Shout MERRY CHRISTMAS, not Happy Holiday!

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A Dog Named Lucky
Anyone who has pets will really like this. You'll like it even if you don't and you may even decide you need one!
Mary and her husband Jim had a dog named 'Lucky.' Lucky was a real character. Whenever Mary and Jim had company come for a weekend visit they would warn their friends to not leave their luggage open because Lucky would help himself to whatever struck his fancy. Inevitably, someone would forget and something would come up missing. Mary or Jim would go to Lucky's toy box in the basement and there the treasure would be, amid all of Lucky's other favorite toys. Lucky always stashed his finds in his toy box and he was very particular that his toys stay in the box.
It happened that Mary found out she had breast cancer. Something told her she was going to die of this disease......in fact; she was just sure it was fatal.
She scheduled the double mastectomy, fear riding her shoulders. The night before she was to go to the hospital she cuddled with Lucky. A thought struck her....what would happen to Lucky? Although the three-year-old dog liked Jim, he was Mary's dog through and through. If I die, Lucky will be abandoned, Mary thought. He won't understand that I didn't want to leave him! The thought made her sadder than thinking of her own death.
The double mastectomy was harder on Mary than her doctors had anticipated and Mary was hospitalized for over two weeks. Jim took Lucky for his evening walk faithfully, but the little dog just drooped, whining and miserable.
Finally the day came for Mary to leave the hospital. When she arrived home, Mary was so exhausted she couldn't even make it up the steps to her bedroom. Jim made his wife comfortable on the couch and left her to nap.
Lucky stood watching Mary but he didn't come to her when she called. It made Mary sad but sleep soon overcame her and she dozed.
When Mary woke for a second she couldn't understand what was wrong. She couldn't move her head and her body felt heavy and hot. But panic soon gave way to laughter when Mary realized the problem. She was covered, literally blanketed, with every treasure Lucky owned! While she had slept, the sorrowing dog had made trip after trip to the basement bringing his beloved mistress all his favorite things in life.
He had covered her with his love.
Mary forgot about dying. Instead she and Lucky began living again, walking further and further together every day. It's been 12 years now and Mary is still cancer-free. Lucky. He still steals treasures and stashes them in his toy box but Mary remains his greatest treasure.

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Satan's Schemes: Are They Working For You?

Satan called a worldwide convention of demons. In his opening address he said, "We can't keep Christians from going to church. We can't keep them from reading their Bibles and knowing the truth. We can't even keep them from forming an intimate relationship with their savior. Once they gain that connection with Jesus, our power over them is broken. So let them go to their churches; let them have their covered dish dinners, but steal their time, so they don't have time to develop a relationship With Jesus Christ."
This is what I want you to do," said the devil: "Distract them from gaining hold of their Savior and maintaining that vital connection throughout their day!"
"How shall we do this?" his demons shouted.
"Keep them busy in the non-essentials of life and invent innumerable schemes to occupy their minds," he answered. "Tempt them to spend, spend, spend, and borrow, borrow, borrow. Persuade the wives to go to work for long hours and the husbands to work 6-7 days each week, 10-12 hours a day, so they can afford their empty Lifestyles. Keep them from spending time with their children. As their families fragment, soon, their homes will offer no escape from the pressures of work! Over-stimulate their minds so that they cannot hear that still, small voice. Entice them to play the radio or I-Pod whenever they drive, to keep the TV, DVDs, CDs and their PCs going constantly in their home and see to it that every store and restaurant in the world plays non-biblical music Constantly. This will jam their minds and break that union with Christ. Fill the coffee tables with magazines and newspapers. Pound their minds with the news 24 hours a day. Invade their driving moments with billboards. Flood their mailboxes with junk mail, mail order catalogs, sweepstakes, and every kind of newsletter and promotional offering free products, services And false hopes. Keep skinny, beautiful models on the magazines and TV so their husbands will believe that outward beauty is what's important, and they'll become dissatisfied with their wives. Keep the wives too tired to love their husbands at night. Give them headaches too! If they don't give their husbands the love they need, they will begin to look elsewhere. That will fragment their families quickly! Give them Santa Claus to distract them from teaching their children the real meaning of Christmas. Give them an Easter bunny so they won't talk about His resurrection and power over sin and death. Even in their recreation, let them be excessive. Have them return from their recreation exhausted. Keep them too busy to go out in nature and reflect on God's creation. Send them to amusement parks, sporting events, plays, concerts, and movies instead. Keep them busy, busy, and busy. And when they meet for spiritual fellowship, involve them in gossip and small talk so that they leave with troubled consciences. Crowd their lives with so many good causes they have no time to seek power from Jesus. Soon they will be working in their own strength, sacrificing their health and family for the good of the cause. It will work! It will work!"
It was quite a plan! The demons went eagerly to their assignments causing Christians everywhere to get busier and more rushed, going here and there. Having little time for their God or their families. Having no time to tell others about the power of Jesus to change lives.
I guess the question is, has the devil been successful in his schemes? You be the judge. Does "BUSY" mean: B-eing U-nder S-atan's Y-oke?
So, how's Satan's little scheme working for you?

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The SPARROW at STARBUCKS
The song that silenced the cappuccino machine.

It was chilly in Manhattan but warm inside the Starbucks shop on 51st Street and Broadway, just a skip up from Times Square . Early November weather in New York City holds only the slightest hint of the bitter chill of late December and January, but it's enough to send the masses crowding indoors to vie for available space and warmth. For a musician, it's the most lucrative Starbucks location in the world, I'm told, and consequently, the tips can be substantial if you play your tunes right.

Apparently, we were striking all the right chords that night, because our basket was almost overflowing. It was a fun, low-pressure gig - I was playing keyboard and singing backup for my friend who also added rhythm with an arsenal of percussion instruments. We mostly did pop songs from the '40s to the '90s with a few original tunes thrown in. During our emotional rendition of the classic, "If You Don't Know Me by Now," I noticed a lady sitting in one of the lounge chairs across from me. She was swaying to the beat and singing along.

After the tune was over, she approached me. "I apologize for singing along on that song. Did it bother you?" she asked.

"No," I replied. "We love it when the audience joins in. Would you like to sing up front on the next selection?" To my delight, she accepted my invitation. "You choose," I said. "What are you in the mood to sing?"

"Well. ... do you know any hymns?" Hymns? This woman didn't know who she was dealing with. I cut my teeth on hymns. Before I was even born, I was going to church. I gave our guest singer a knowing look. "Name one."

"Oh, I don't know. There are so many good ones. You pick one." So I did.
"Okay," I replied. "How about 'His Eye is on the Sparrow'?"

My new friend was silent, her eyes averted. Then she fixed her eyes on mine again and said, "Yeah. Let's do that one." She slowly nodded her head, put down her purse, straightened her jacket and faced the center of the shop. With my two-bar setup, she began to sing,
"Why should I be discouraged? Why should the shadows come?"

The audience of coffee drinkers was transfixed. Even the gurgling noises of the cappuccino machine ceased as the employees stopped what they were doing to listen. The song rose to its conclusion.

"I sing because I'm happy;
I sing because I'm free.
For His eye is on the sparrow
And I know He watches me."

When the last note was sung, the applause crescendoed to a deafening roar that would have rivaled a sold-out crowd at Carnegie Hall. Embarrassed, the woman tried to shout over the din, "Oh, y'all go back to your coffee! I didn't come in here to do a concert! I just came in here to get somethin' to drink, just like you!"

But the ovation continued.. I embraced my new friend. "You, my dear, have made my whole year! That was beautiful!"

"Well, it's funny that you picked that particular hymn," she said.
"Why is that?"
"Well . .." she hesitated again, "that was my daughter's favorite song."
"Really!" I exclaimed.

"Yes," she said, and then grabbed my hands. By this time, the applause had subsided and it was business as usual... "She was 16. She died of a brain tumor last week."

I said the first thing that found its way through my stunned silence. "Are you going to be okay?"
She smiled through tear-filled eyes and squeezed my hands. "I'm gonna be okay. I've just got to keep trusting the Lord and singing his songs, and everything's gonna be just fine." She picked up her bag, gave me her card, and then she was gone.

Was it just a coincidence that we happened to be singing in that particular coffee shop on that particular November night? Coincidence that this wonderful lady just happened to walk into that particular shop? Coincidence that of all the hymns to choose from, I just happened to pick the very hymn that was the favorite of her daughter, who had died just the week before? I refuse to believe it. God has been arranging encounters in human history since the beginning of time, and it's no stretch for me to imagine that he could reach into a coffee shop in midtown Manhattan and turn an ordinary gig into a revival. It was a great reminder that if we keep trusting him and singing his songs, everything's gonna be okay.

The next time you feel like GOD can't use YOU, remember,
Noah was a drunk
Abraham was too old
Isaac was a daydreamer
Jacob was a liar
Leah was ugly
Joseph was abused
Moses had a stuttering problem
Gideon was afraid
Samson had long hair and was a womanizer
Rahab was a prostitute
Jeremiah and Timothy were too young
David had an affair and was a murderer
Elijah was suicidal
Isaiah preached naked
Jonah ran from God
Naomi was a widow
Job went bankrupt
John the Baptist ate bugs
Peter denied Christ
The Disciples fell asleep while praying
Martha worried about everything
The Samaritan woman was divorced, more than once
Zaccheus was too small
Paul was too religious
Timothy had an ulcer...
And Lazarus was dead!

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In the fall of 2008, there was an unusual high school football game played in Grapevine, Texas. The game was between Grapevine Faith Academy and the Gainesville State School. Faith is a Christian school and Gainesville State School is located within a maximum security correction facility.
Gainesville State School has 14 players. They play every game on the road. Their record was 0-8. They've only scored twice. Their 14 players are teenagers who have been convicted of crimes ranging from drugs to assault to robbery. Most had families who had disowned them. They wore outdated, used shoulder pads and helmets. Faith Academy was 7-2. They had 70 players, 11 coaches, and the latest equipment.
Chris Hogan, the head coach at Faith Academy, knew the Gainesville team would have no fans and it would be no contest, so he thought, "What if half of our fans and half of our cheerleaders, for one night only, cheered for the other team?" He sent out an e-mail to the faithful asking them to do just that. "Here's the message I want you to send," Hogan wrote. "You're just as valuable as any other person on the planet."
Some folks were confused and thought he was nuts. One player said, "Coach, why are we doing this?" Hogan said, "Imagine you don't have a home life, no one to love you, no one pulling for you. Imagine that everyone pretty much had given up on you. Now, imagine what it would feel like and mean to you for hundreds of people to suddenly believe in you."
The idea took root. On the night of the game, imagine the surprise of those 14 players when they took the field and there was a banner the cheerleaders had made for them to crash through. The visitors' stands were full. The cheerleaders were leading cheers for them. The fans were calling them by their names. Isaiah, the quarterback-middle linebacker said, "I never in my life thought I would hear parents cheering to tackle and hit their kid. Most of the time, when we come out, people are afraid of us. You can see it in their eyes, but these people are yelling for us. They knew our names."
Faith won the game, and after the game the teams gathered at the 50-yard line to pray. That's when Isaiah, the teenage convict-quarterback surprised everybody and asked if he could pray and he prayed, "Lord, I don't know what just happened so I don't know how or who to say thank you to, but I never knew there were so many people in the world who cared about us." On the way back to the bus, under guard, each one of the players was handed a burger, fries, a coke, candy, a Bible, and an encouraging letter from the players from Faith Academy.
What an incredible act of Christian witness and kindness and goodness that was. Proverbs 11:17 says, "Your own soul is nourished when you are kind." Proverbs 3:27 says, "Do not withhold good when it is in your power to act."
Be kind to someone this week. Be kind to every person you meet. You might be amazed at what God will do with a simple act of kindness.
-Dr. Tim Thompson

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A farmer had some puppies he needed to sell. He painted a sign advertising the 4 pups and set about nailing it to a post on the edge of his yard. As he was driving the last nail into the post, he felt a tug on his overalls He looked down into the eyes of a little boy.
"Mister," he said, "I want to buy one of your puppies."
"Well," said the farmer, as he rubbed the sweat off the back of his neck, "These puppies come
from fine parents and cost a good deal of money."
The boy dropped his head for a moment. Then reaching deep into his pocket, he pulled out a
handful of change and held it up to the farmer.
"I've got thirty-nine cents. Is that enough to take a look?"
"Sure," said the farmer. And with that he let out a whistle. "Here, Dolly!" he called.
Out from the doghouse and down the ramp ran Dolly followed by four little balls of fur.
The little boy pressed his face against the chain link fence. His eyes danced with delight. As the
dogs made their way to the fence, the little boy noticed something else stirring inside the doghouse.
Slowly another little ball appeared, this one noticeably smaller. Down the ramp it slid. Then in a somewhat awkward manner, the little pup began hobbling toward the others, doing its best to catch up.
"I want that one," the little boy said, pointing to the runt.
The farmer knelt down at the boy's side and said, "Son, you don't want that puppy. He will never be able to run and play with you like these other dogs would."
With that the little boy stepped back from the fence, reached down, and began rolling up one leg of his trousers. In doing so he revealed a steel brace running down both sides of his leg attaching itself to a specially made shoe.
Looking back up at the farmer, he said, "You see sir, I don't run too well myself, and he will need someone who understands."
With tears in his eyes, the farmer reached down and picked up the little pup.Holding it carefully he handed it to the little boy.
"How much?" asked the little boy.
"No charge," answered the farmer, "There's no charge for love."

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Not many people get a picture of this proud bird snuggled up next to them

Freedom and I have been together 10 years this summer. She came in as a baby in 1998 with two broken wings. Her left wing doesn't open all the way even after surgery, it was broken in 4
places. She's my baby.
When Freedom came in she could not stand and both wings were broken. She was
emaciated and covered in lice. We made the decision to give her a chance at life, so I took her to the vet's office. From then on, I was always around her. We had her in a
huge dog carrier with the top off, and it was loaded up with shredded newspaper for her to lay in. I used to sit and talk to her, urging her to live, to fight; and she would lay there looking at me with those big brown eyes. We also had to tube feed her.
This went on for 4-6 weeks, and even then she still couldn't stand. It got to the point where the decision was made to euthanize her if she couldn't stand in a week. You know you don't want to cross that line between torture and rehab, and it looked like death was winning.

She was going to be put down that Friday, and I was supposed to come in that Thursday afternoon. I didn't want to go to the center that Thursday, because I couldn't bear the thought of her being euthanized; but I went anyway, and when I walked in everyone was grinning from ear to ear. I went immediately back to her cage; and there she was, standing on her own, a big beautiful eagle. She was ready to live. I was just about in tears by then. That was a very good day.
We knew she could never fly, so the director asked me to glove train her. I got her used to the glove, and we started doing education programs for schools in western Washington . We wound up in the newspapers, radio (believe it or not) and some TV. Miracle Pets even did a show about us.
In the spring of 2000, I was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. I had stage 3, which is not good (one major organ plus everywhere), so I wound up doing 8 months of chemo. Lost the hair - the whole bit. I missed a lot of work. When I felt good enough, I would go to Sarvey and take Freedom out for walks. Freedom would also come to me in my dreams and help me fight the cancer. This happened time and time again.
Fast forward to November 2000, the day after Thanksgiving. I went in for my last checkup. I was told that if the cancer was not all gone after 8 rounds of chemo, then my last option was a stem cell transplant. Anyway, they did the tests; and I had to come back Monday for the results. I did, and was told that all the cancer was gone.

So the first thing I did was get up to Sarvey and take the big girl out for a walk. It was misty and cold. I went to her flight and jessed her up, and we went out front to the top of the hill. I hadn't said a word to Freedom, but somehow she knew. She looked at me and wrapped both her wings around me to where I could feel them pressing in on my back (I was engulfed in eagle wings), and she touched my nose with her beak and stared into my eyes, and we just stood there like that for I don't know how long. That was a magic moment. We have been soul mates ever since she came in. This is a very special bird.

On a side note: I have had people who were sick come up to us when we are out, and Freedom has some kind of hold on them. I once had a guy who was terminal come up to us and I let him hold her. His knees just about buckled and he swore he could feel her power coarse through his body. I have so many stories like that.
I never forget the honor I have of being so close to such a magnificent spirit as Freedom.
Hope you enjoyed this.
Jeff

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Do you remember Kilroy?

Anyone born in the mid thirties knew Kilroy. We didn't know why but we had lapel pins with his nose hanging over the label and the top of his face above his nose with his hands hanging over the label too. I believe it was orange colored. No one knew why he was so well known but we all joined in!

Kind of a war story. And now we know! INTERESTING?
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KILROY WAS HERE!

WHO THE HECK WAS KILROY?

In 1946 the American Transit Association, through its radio program, "Speak to America," sponsored a nationwide contest to find the REAL Kilroy, offering a prize of a real trolley car to the person who could prove himself to be the genuine article.

Almost 40 men stepped forward to make that claim, but only James Kilroy from Halifax, Massachusetts, had evidence of his identity.

Kilroy was a 46-year old shipyard worker during the war who worked as a checker at the Fore River Shipyard in Quincy. His job was to go around and check on the number of rivets completed. Riveters were on piecework and got paid by the rivet.

Kilroy would count a block of rivets and put a check mark in semi-waxed lumber chalk, so the rivets wouldn't be counted twice. When Kilroy went off duty, the riveters would erase the mark.

Later on, an off-shift inspector would come through and count the rivets a second time, resulting in double pay for the riveters.

One day Kilroy's boss called him into his office. The foreman was upset about all the wages being paid to riveters, and asked him to investigate. It was then he realized what had been going on.

The tight spaces he had to crawl in to check the rivets didn't lend themselves to lugging around a paint can and brush, so Kilroy decided to stick with the waxy chalk. He continued to put his checkmark on each job he inspected, but added KILROY WAS HERE in king-sized letters next to the check, and eventually added the sketch of the chap with the long nose peering over the fence and that became part of the Kilroy message. Once he did that, the riveters stopped trying to wipe away his marks.

Ordinarily the rivets and chalk marks would have been covered up with paint. With war on, however, ships were leaving the Quincy Yard so fast that there wasn't time to paint them. As a result, Kilroy's inspection "trademark" was seen by thousands of servicemen who boarded the troopships the yard produced. His message apparently rang a bell with the servicemen, because they picked it up and spread it all over Europe and the South Pacific.

Before war's end, "Kilroy" had been here, there, and everywhere on the long hauls to Berlin and Tokyo.

To the troops outbound in those ships, however, he was a complete mystery; all they knew for sure was that some jerk named Kilroy had "been there first." As a joke, U.S. servicemen began placing the graffiti wherever they landed, claiming it was already there when they arrived.

Kilroy became the U.S. super-GI who had always "already been" wherever GIs went. It became a challenge to place the logo in the most unlikely places imaginable (it is said to be atop Mt. Everest, the Statue of Liberty, the underside of the Arc De Triomphe, and even scrawled in the dust on the moon.)

As the war went on, the legend grew. Underwater demolition teams routinely sneaked ashore on Japanese-held islands in the Pacific to map the terrain for coming invasions by U.S. troops (and thus, presumably, were the first GI's there). On one occasion, however, they reported seeing enemy troops painting over the Kilroy logo! In 1945, an outhouse was built for the exclusive use of Roosevelt, Stalin, and Churchill at the Potsdam conference. Its first occupant was Stalin, who emerged and asked his aide (in Russian), "Who is Kilroy?"

To help prove his authenticity in 1946, James Kilroy brought along officials from the shipyard and some of the riveters. He won the trolley car, which he gave to his nine children as a Christmas gift and set it up as a playhouse in the Kilroy front yard in Halifax , Massachusetts.

So, now you know the rest of the story!
A firm faith in the universal providence of God is the solution of all earthly troubles.
-- B. B. Warfield

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Our 14 year old dog, Abbey, died last month. The day after she died, my 4 year old daughter Meredith was crying and talking about how much she missed Abbey. She asked if we could write a letter to God so that when Abbey got to heaven, God would recognize her. I told her that I thought we could so she dictated these words:
"Dear God,
Will you please take care of my dog? She died yesterday and is with you in heaven. I miss her very much. I am happy that you let me have her as my dog even though she got sick. I hope you will play with her. She likes to play with balls and to swim. I am sending a picture of her so when you see her You will know that she is my dog. I really miss her.
Love,
Meredith"
We put the letter in an envelope with a picture of Abbey and Meredith and addressed it to ‘God in Heaven.' We put our return address on it. Then Meredith pasted several stamps on the front of the envelope because she said it would take lots of stamps to get the letter all the way to heaven. That afternoon she dropped it into the letter box at the post office. A few days later, she asked if God had gotten the letter yet. I told her that I thought He had.
Yesterday, there was a package wrapped in gold paper on our front porch addressed, 'To Meredith' in an unfamiliar hand. Meredith opened it. Inside was a book by Mr. Rogers called, 'When a Pet Dies' Taped to the inside front cover was the letter we had written to God in its opened envelope. On the opposite page was the picture of Abbey & Meredith and this note:
Dear Meredith,
Abbey arrived safely in heaven.
Having the picture was a big help. I recognized Abbey right away.
Abbey isn't sick anymore. Her spirit is here with me just like it stays in your heart. Abbey loved being your dog. Since we don't need our bodies in heaven, I don't have any pockets to keep your picture in, so I am sending it back to you in this little book for you to keep and have something to remember Abbey by.
Thank you for the beautiful letter and thank your mother for helping you write it and sending it to me. What a wonderful mother you have. I picked her especially for you. I send my blessings every day and remember that I love you very much.
By the way, I'm easy to find, I am wherever there is love.
Love,
God

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After you read this article, google Liu Wei and watch and listen to his performance on "China's Got Talent" it will bless your soul. tom
Armless Pianist Liu Wei Wows & Wins On 'China's Got Talent'
Posted Mon Oct 11, 2010 9:18am PDT by Lyndsey Parker in Reality Rocks

I wrote about Liu Wei, an astoundingly brave 23-year-old "China's Got Talent" contestant who at age 10 lost both of his arms in a freak electrocution accident, but still decided to pursue his dream of becoming a concert pianist--even after after one piano teacher told him he would never, ever succeed.
And now, Liu has succeeded, all right. When he auditioned for "China's Got Talent" in August with a perfect performance of French pianist Richard Clayderman's "Mariage D'amour" played entirely with his toes, he became not just a Chinese but an international hero, a role model for anyone struggling to fight incredible odds. And this past weekend, Liu won the entire competition with a tear-jerking and inspiring performance of James Blunt's "You're Beautiful"--complete with English-language singing--in front of a capacity audience at Shanghai Stadium.
When Liu first auditioned, he delivered a brave and serious speech, declaring: "For people like me, there were only two options. One was to abandon all dreams, which would lead to a quick, hopeless death. The other was to struggle without arms to live an outstanding life." But on Sunday when he accepted his "CGT" prize, he revealed a lighter side of his personality, telling the judges, "At least I have a pair of perfect legs!"
Congratulations to Liu. Heartening tales of overcoming adversity are nothing new on "Got Talent" and other reality shows, but his is a true sob story with a truly happy ending.

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True Love & Adversity
It was a busy morning, about 8:30, when an elderly gentleman in his 80's arrived to have stitches removed from his thumb. He said he was in a hurry as he had an appointment at 9:00 am.
I took his vital signs and had him take a seat, knowing it would be over an hour before someone would to able to see him. I saw him looking at his watch and decided, since I
was not busy with another patient, I would evaluate his wound. On exam, it was well healed, so I talked to one of the doctors, got the needed supplies to remove his sutures and redress his wound.
While taking care of his wound, I asked him if he had another doctor's appointment this morning, as he was in such a hurry.
The gentleman told me no, that he needed to go to
the nursing home to eat breakfast with his wife. I inquired
as to her health.
He told me that she had been there
for a while and that she was a victim of Alzheimer's Disease.
As we talked, I asked if she would be upset if he was a bit late.
He replied that she no longer knew who he was, that she had not recognized him in five years now.
I was surprised, and asked him, 'And you still go every
morning, even though she doesn't know who you are?'
He smiled as he patted my hand and said,
'She doesn't know me, but I still know who she is.'
I had to hold back tears as he left, I had goose bumps on my arm, and thought,
'That is the kind of love I want in my life.'
Truelove is neither physical, nor romantic.
True love is an acceptance of all that is, has been, will be, and will not be.

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Blessed In Aging
~Esther Mary Walker
Blessed are they who understand
My faltering step and shaking hand
Blessed, who know my ears today
Must strain to hear the things they say.
Blessed are those who seem to know
My eyes are dim and my mind is slow
Blessed are those who look away
When I spilled tea that weary day.
Blessed are they who, with cheery smile
Stopped to chat for a little while
Blessed are they who know the way
To bring back memories of yesterday.
Blessed are those who never say
"You've told that story twice today"
Blessed are they who make it known
That I am loved, respected and not alone.
And blessed are they who will ease the days
Of my journey home, in loving ways.

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September 8, 2010

A short story in pictures and words.........

A mother asked this President... 'Why did my son have to die in Iraq ?'

A mother asked this President.. 'Why did my son have to die in Somalia ?'

A mother asked this President... 'Why did my son have to die in Kuwait ?'

Another mother asked this President... 'Why did my son have to die in Vietnam ?'

Another mother asked this President... 'Why did my son have to die in Korea ?'

Another mother asked this President... 'Why did my son have to die on Iwo Jima ?'

Another mother asked this President... 'Why did my son have to die on a battlefield in France ?'

Yet another mother asked President... 'Why did my son have to die at Gettysburg ?'

And yet another mother asked President... 'Why did my son have to die on a frozen field near Valley Forge ?'

Then long, long ago, a mother asked..
'Heavenly Father .. why did my Son have to die on a cross outside of Jerusalem ?'

And He answered, 'So that others may live and dwell in peace, happiness, and freedom.

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Reported to be written by Regina Brett, 90 years old, of the Plain Dealer, Cleveland , Ohio .
"To celebrate growing older, I once wrote the 45 lessons life taught me. It is the most requested column I've ever written. My odometer rolled over to 90 in August, so here is the column once more:
1. Life isn't fair, but it's still good.
2. When in doubt, just take the next small step.
3. Life is too short to waste time hating anyone.
4. Your job won't take care of you when you are sick. Your friends and parents will. Stay in touch.
5. Pay off your credit cards every month.
6. You don't have to win every argument. Agree to disagree.
7. Cry with someone. It's more healing than crying alone.
8. It's OK to get angry with God. He can take it.
9. Save for retirement starting with your first paycheck.
10. When it comes to chocolate, resistance is futile.
11. Make peace with your past so it won't screw up the present.
12. It's OK to let your children see you cry.
13. Don't compare your life to others. You have no idea what their journey is all about.
14. If a relationship has to be a secret, you shouldn't be in it.
15. Everything can change in the blink of an eye. But don't worry; God never blinks.
16. Take a deep breath. It calms the mind.
17. Get rid of anything that isn't useful, beautiful or joyful.
18. Whatever doesn't kill you really does make you stronger.
19. It's never too late to have a happy childhood. But the second one is up to you and no one else.
20. When it comes to going after what you love in life, don't take no for an answer.
21. Burn the candles, use the nice sheets, wear the fancy lingerie Don't save it for a special occasion. Today is special.
22. Over prepare, then go with the flow.
23. Be eccentric now. Don't wait for old age to wear purple.
24. The most important sex organ is the brain.
25. No one is in charge of your happiness but you.
26. Frame every so-called disaster with these words 'In five years, will this matter?'
27. Always choose life.
28. Forgive everyone everything.
29. What other people think of you is none of your business.
30. Time heals almost everything. Give time time.
31. However good or bad a situation is, it will change.
32. Don't take yourself so seriously. No one else does.
33. Believe in miracles.
34. God loves you because of who God is, not because of anything you did or didn't do.
35. Don't audit life. Show up and make the most of it now.
36. Growing old beats the alternative -- dying young.
37. Your children get only one childhood.
38. All that truly matters in the end is that you loved.
39. Get outside every day. Miracles are waiting everywhere.
40. If we all threw our problems in a pile and saw everyone else's, we'd grab ours back.
41. Envy is a waste of time. You already have all you need.
42. The best is yet to come...
43. No matter how you feel, get up, dress up and show up.
44. Yield.
45. Life isn't tied with a bow, but it's still a gift."

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Crosses

When driving to, from, and through Frankenmuth, Michigan, I'm always intrigued with the many small simple crosses in the front yards of the homes we pass by.

Those crosses are a statement of support for Frankenmuth's Christian foundation.

Two years ago an atheist living there complained about two crosses on a bridge in town. He requested that they be removed and the town removed them.

He then decided that, since he was so successful with that, the city shield should also be changed since it had on it, along with other symbols, a heart with a cross inside signifying the city's Lutheran beginnings.

At that point, the residents decided they had had enough. Hundreds of residents made their opinions known by placing small crosses in their front yards.

Seeing this quiet but powerful statement from the community, the man removed his complaint. Those simple crosses remain in those front yards today.

After passing those crosses for two years, it finally hit me that a small cross in millions of front yards across our country could provide a powerful and inspiring message for all Americans passing them every day. I think it might be time to take this idea across America.

We have an administration that says "we are not a Christian nation" and everywhere you look the ACLU and others are trying to remove from our history and current lives any reference to God, prayer, or the fact that our country was founded on Judeo-Christian principles. Our administration can't bring themselves to talk about "radical Muslims or Islamic terrorists" for fear of offending them, but they can talk about Americans "clinging to their guns and their religion", or insinuate that our own military troops coming home from service overseas might turn into terrorists.

The majority of Americans are Christians, why are we letting this happen to us?

It's time to stand up and make a statement..a small, quiet, but powerful statement. If you agree, place a small white cross in your front yard or garden for all to see that they are not alone. It would be a beautiful thing to see crosses all across America.

God has richly blessed America but America is falling short of returning thanks for it...we can help to change that.

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Where God Is
He was just a little boy,
On a lazy, sunny, beautiful day.
Wandering home from Bible school,
And dawdling on the way.
Scuffing his shoes into the grass;
He found a caterpillar.
He found a fluffy milkweed pod
And blew out all the 'filler.'
A bird's nest in a tree overhead,
So wisely placed up so high.
Was just another wonder,
That caught his eager eye.
A neighbor watching his zigzag course,
And hailed him from his lawn;
He Asked him where he'd been that day
And what was going on.
"I've been to Bible School," He said.
And turning a piece of sod,
He picked up a wiggly worm replying,
"I've learned a lot about God."
"M'm, that's a very fine way," the neighbor said,
"for a boy to spend his time.
'If you'll tell me where God is,
I'll give you a brand new dime."
Quick as a flash the answer came!
His words not the least bit faint.
"I'll give you a dollar, Mister,
If you can tell me where God ain't."

Life without God is like an
unsharpened pencil - it has no point.

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Answered Prayer

I asked for strength that I might achieve,
He made me weak, that I might obey,

I asked for health, that I might do greater things,
I was given grace that I might do better things,

I asked for riches that I might be happy,
I was given poverty that I might be wise,

I asked for power that I might have the praise of man,
I was given weakness that I might feel the need of God,

I asked for all things, that I might enjoy life,
I was given life that I might enjoy all things,

I received nothing that I asked for,
All that I hope for, my prayer was answered.

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Online Buddies
After tossing her books on the sofa, she decided to grab a snack and get on-line. She logged on under her screen name ByAngel213. She checked her Buddy List and saw GoTo123 was on. She sent him an instant message:
ByAngel213:
Hi. I'm glad you are on! I thought someone was following me home today. It was really weird!
GoTo123:
LOL You watch too much TV. Why would someone be following you?
Don't you live in a safe neighborhood?
ByAngel213:
Of course I do. LOL I guess it was my imagination cuz' I didn't see anybody when I looked out.
GoTo123:
Unless you gave your name out on-line. You haven't done that have you?
ByAngel213:
Of course not. I'm not stupid you know.
GoTo123:
Did you have a softball game after school today?
ByAngel213:
Yes and we won!!
GoTo123:
That's great! Who did you play?
ByAngel213:
We played the Hornets. LOL. Their uniforms are so gross! They look like bees. LOL
GoTo123:
What is your team called?
ByAngel213:
We are the Canton Cats. We have tiger paws on our uniforms. They are really cool.
GoTo123:
Did you pitch?
ByAngel213:
No I play second base. I got to go. My homework has to be done before my parents get home. I don't want them mad at me. Bye!
GoTo123:
Catch you later. Bye
Meanwhile.......GoTo123 went to the member menu and began to search for her profile. When it came up, he highlighted it and printed it out. He took out a pen and began to write down what he knew about Angel so far.
Her name: Shannon
Birthday: Jan. 3, 1997
Age: 13
State where she lived: North Carolina
Hobbies: softball, chorus, skating and going to the mall. Besides this information, he knew she lived in Canton because she had just told him. He knew she stayed by herself until 6:30 p.m. every afternoon until her parents came home from work.
He knew she played softball on Thursday afternoons on the school team, and the team was named the Canton Cats. Her favorite number 7 was printed on her jersey. He knew she was in the eighth grade at the Canton Junior High School She had told him all this in the conversations they had on-line. He had enough information to find her now.
Shannon didn't tell her parents about the incident on the way home from the ballpark that day. She didn't want them to make a scene and stop her from walking home from the softball games. Parents were always overreacting and hers were the worst. It made her wish she was not an only child. Maybe if she had brothers and sisters, her parents wouldn't be so overprotective.
By Thursday, Shannon had forgotten about the footsteps following her. Her game was in full swing when suddenly she felt someone staring at her. It was then that the memory came back. She glanced up from her second base position to see a man watching her closely. He was leaning against the fence behind first base and he smiled when she looked at him. He didn't look scary and she quickly dismissed the sudden fear she had felt.
After the game, he sat on a bleacher while she talked to the coach. She noticed his smile once again as she walked past him. He nodded and she smiled back. He noticed her name on the back of her shirt. He knew he had found her. Quietly, he walked a safe distance behind her. It was only a few blocks to Shannon 's home, and once he saw where she lived he quickly returned to the park to get his car.
Now he had to wait. He decided to get a bite to eat until the time came to go to Shannon 's house. He drove to a fast food restaurant and sat there until time to make his move.
Shannon was in her room later that evening when she heard voices in the living room.
"Shannon, come here," her father called. He sounded upset and she couldn't imagine why. She went into the room to see the man from the ballpark sitting on the sofa.
"Sit down," her father began, "this man has just told us a most interesting story about you."
Shannon sat back. How could he tell her parents anything? She had never seen him before today!
"Do you know who I am, Shannon ?" the man asked.
"No," Shannon answered.
"I am a police officer and your online friend, GoTo123."
Shannon was stunned. "That's impossible! GoTo is a kid my age! He's 14. And he lives in Michigan !"
The man smiled. "I know I told you all that, but it wasn't true. You see, Shannon , there are people on-line who pretend to be kids; I was one of them. But while others do it to injure kids and hurt them, I belong to a group of parents who do it to protect kids from predators. I came here to find you to teach you how dangerous it is to talk to people on-line. You told me enough about yourself to make it easy for me to find you. You named the school you went to, the name of your ball team and the position you played. The number and name on your jersey just made finding you a breeze."
Shannon was stunned. "You mean you don't live in Michigan ?"
He laughed. "No, I live in Raleigh It made you feel safe to think I was so far away, didn't it?"
She nodded.
"I had a friend whose daughter was like you." The man stated. "Only she wasn't as lucky. The guy found her and murdered her while she was home alone. Kids are taught not to tell anyone when they are alone, yet they do it all the time on-line. The wrong people trick you into giving out information a little here and there on-line. Before you know it, you have told them enough for them to find you without even realizing you have done it. I hope you've learned a lesson from this and won't do it again. Will you please tell others about this so they will be safe too?"
"It's a promise!" Shannon stated emphatically.
That night Shannon and her Dad and Mom all knelt down together and thanked God for protecting Shannon from what could have been a tragic situation.
Now, I am asking you to please copy this story and email it to everyone you know who has children of any age. Even send it to people without kids and ask them to send it to friends and family who have children or grandchildren.
God bless everyone who reads this story.

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Shirley Goodness and Her Baby Girl Marcy

A mom was concerned about her kindergarten son walking to school. He didn't want his mother to walk with him. She wanted to give him the feeling that he had some independence but yet know that he was safe.

So she had an idea of how to handle it. She asked a neighbor if she would please follow him to school in the mornings, staying at a distance, so he probably wouldn't notice her.

She said that since she was up early with her toddler anyway, it would be a good way for them to get some exercise as well, so she agreed.

The next school day, the neighbor and her little girl set out following behind Timmy as he walked to school with another neighbor girl he knew. She did this for the whole week.

As the two walked and chatted, kicking stones and twigs, Timmy's little friend noticed the same lady was following them as she seemed to do every day all week. Finally she said to Timmy, 'Have you noticed that lady following us to school all week? Do you know her?'
Timmy nonchalantly replied, 'Yeah, I know who she is.'
The little girl said, 'Well, who is she?'
'That's just Shirley Goodnest,' Timmy replied, 'and her daughter Marcy.'

"Shirley Goodnest? Who the heck is she and why is she following us?" The little girl asked.
'Well,' Timmy explained, 'every night my Mom makes me say the 23rd Psalm with my prayers, 'cuz she worries about me so much. And in the Psalm, it says, 'Shirley Goodnest and Marcy shall follow me all the days of my life', so I guess I'll just have to get used to it!'

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WHEN YOU THOUGHT I WASN'T LOOKING
A message every adult should read because children are watching you and doing as you do, not as you say.
When you thought I wasn't looking I saw you hang my first painting on the refrigerator, and I immediately wanted to paint another one.
When you thought I wasn't looking I saw you feed a stray cat, and I learned that it was good to be kind to animals.
When you thought I wasn't looking I saw you make my favorite cake for me, and I learned that the little things can be the special things in life.
When you thought I wasn't looking I heard you say a prayer, and I knew that there is a God I could always talk to, and I learned to trust in Him.
When you thought I wasn't looking I saw you make a meal and take it to a friend who was sick, and I learned that we all have to help take care of each other.
When you thought I wasn't looking I saw you take care of our house and everyone in it, and I learned we have to take care of what we are given.
When you thought I wasn't looking I saw how you handled your responsibilities, even when you didn't feel good, and I learned that I would have to be responsible when I grow up.
When you thought I wasn't looking I saw tears come from your eyes, and I learned that sometimes things hurt, but it's all right to cry.
When you thought I wasn't looking I saw that you cared, and I wanted to be everything that I could be..
When you thought I wasn't looking I learned most of life's lessons that I need to know to be a good and productive person when I grow up.
When you thought I wasn't looking I looked at you and wanted to say,' Thanks for all the things I saw when you thought I wasn't looking.'

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God Found Tommy
John Powell a professor at Loyola University in Chicago writes about a student in his Theology of Faith class named Tommy:
Some twelve years ago, I stood watching my university students file into the classroom for our first session in the Theology of Faith. That was the first day I first saw Tommy. My eyes and my mind both blinked. He was combing his long flaxen hair, which hung six inches below his shoulders.
It was the first time I had ever seen a boy with hair that long. I guess it was just coming into fashion then. I know in my mind that it isn't what's on your head but what's in it that counts; but on that day I was unprepared and my emotions flipped.
I immediately filed Tommy under "S" for strange ... very strange. Tommy turned out to be the "atheist in residence" in my Theology of Faith course. He constantly objected to, smirked at, or whined about the possibility of an unconditionally loving Father-God. We lived with each other in relative peace for one semester, although I admit he was for me at times a serious pain in the back pew.
When he came up at the end of the course to turn in his final exam, he asked in a slightly cynical tone: "Do you think I'll ever find God?"
I decided instantly on a little shock therapy. "No!" I said very emphatically.
"Oh," he responded, "I thought that was the product you were pushing."
I let him get five steps from the classroom door and then called out: "Tommy! I don't think you'll ever find him, but I am absolutely certain that He will find you!" He shrugged a little and left my class and my life.
I felt slightly disappointed at the thought that he had missed my clever line: "He will find you!" At least I thought it was clever. Later I heard that Tommy had graduated and I was duly grateful.
Then a sad report, I heard that Tommy had terminal cancer. Before I could search him out, he came to see me. When he walked into my office, his body was very badly wasted, and the long hair had all fallen out as a result of chemotherapy. But his eyes were bright and his voice was firm, for the first time, I believe. "Tommy, I've thought about you so often. I hear you are sick!" I blurted out.
"Oh, yes, very sick. I have cancer in both lungs. It's a matter of weeks."
"Can you talk about it, Tom?"
"Sure, what would you like to know?"
"What's it like to be only twenty-four and dying?"
"Well, it could be worse."
"Like what?"
"Well, like being fifty and having no values or ideals, like being fifty and thinking that booze, seducing women, and making money are the real ‘biggies' in life."
I began to look through my mental file cabinet under "S" where I had filed Tommy as strange. (It seems as though everybody I try to reject by classification God sends back into my life to educate me.)
But what I really came to see you about," Tom said, " is something you said to me on the last day of class." (He remembered!) He continued, "I asked you if you thought I would ever find God and you said, ‘No!' which surprised me. Then you said, ‘But he will find you.' I thought about that a lot, even though my search for God was hardly intense at that time. (My "clever" line. He thought about that a lot!) But when the doctors removed a lump from my groin and told me that it was malignant, then I got serious about locating God. And when the malignancy spread into my vital organs, I really began banging bloody fists against the bronze doors of heaven.
But God did not come out. In fact, nothing happened. Did you ever try anything for a long time with great effort and with no success? You get psychologically glutted, fed up with trying. And then you quit.
Well, one day I woke up, and instead of throwing a few more futile appeals over that high brick wall to a God who may be or may not be there, I just quit. I decided that I didn't really care ... about God, about an afterlife, or anything like that. "I decided to spend what time I had left doing something more profitable. I thought about you and your class and I remembered something else you had said: ‘The essential sadness is to go through life without loving. But it would be almost equally sad to go through life and leave this world without ever telling those you loved that you had loved them.' "So I began with the hardest one: my Dad. He was reading the newspaper when I approached him."
"Dad". . .
"Yes, what?" he asked without lowering the newspaper.
"Dad, I would like to talk with you."
"Well, talk."
"I mean. .. It's really important."
The newspaper came down three slow inches. "What is it?"
"Dad, I love you. I just wanted you to know that." Tom smiled at me and said with obvious satisfaction, as though he felt a warm and secret joy flowing inside of him: "The newspaper fluttered to the floor. Then my father did two things I could never remember him ever doing before. He cried and he hugged me.
And we talked all night, even though he had to go to work the next morning. It felt so good to be close to my father, to see his tears, to feel his hug, to hear him say that he loved me. "It was easier with my mother and little brother. They cried with me, too, and we hugged each other, and started saying real nice things to each other. We shared the things we had been keeping secret for so many years. I was only sorry about one thing: that I had waited so long. Here I was just beginning to open up to all the people I had actually been close to.
"Then, one day I turned around and God was there. He didn't come to me when I pleaded with him. I guess I was like an animal trainer holding out a hoop, ‘C'mon, jump through.' ‘C'mon, I'll give you three days .. .three weeks.' Apparently God does things in his own way and at his own hour. "But the important thing is that he was there. He found me.
You were right. He found me even after I stopped looking for him."
"Tommy," I practically gasped, "I think you are saying something very important and much more universal than you realize. To me, at least, you are saying that the surest way to find God is not to make him a private possession, a problem solver, or an instant consolation in time of need, but rather by opening to love. You know, the Apostle John said that. He said God is love, and anyone who lives in love is living with God and God is living in him.' Tom, could I ask you a favor? You know, when I had you in class you were a real pain. But (laughingly) you can make it all up to me now. Would you come into my present Theology of Faith course and tell them what you have just told me? If I told them the same thing it wouldn't be half as effective as if you were to tell them."
"Oooh . . . I was ready for you, but I don't know if I'm ready for your class."
"Tom, think about it. If and when you are ready, give me a call." In a few days Tommy called, said he was ready for the class, that he wanted to do that for God and for me. So we scheduled a date. However, he never made it.
He had another appointment, far more important than the one with me and my class. Of course, his life was not really ended by his death, only changed.
He made the great step from faith into vision. He found a life far more beautiful than the eye of man has ever seen or the ear of man has ever heard or the mind of man has ever imagined.
Before he died, we talked one last time. "I'm not going to make it to your class," he said.
"I know, Tom."
"Will you tell them for me? Will you . . . tell the whole world for me?"
"I will, Tom. I'll tell them. I'll do my best."
So, to all of you who have been kind enough to hear this simple statement about love, thank you for listening. And to you, Tommy, somewhere in the sunlit, verdant hills of heaven: "I told them, Tommy . ... ...as best I could."

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Every time I am asked to pray, I think of the old fellow who always prayed, 'Lord, prop us up on our leanin' side.' After hearing him pray that prayer many times, someone asked him why he prayed that prayer so fervently.

He answered, 'Well sir, you see, it's like this... I got an old barn out back. It's been there a long time; it's withstood a lot of weather; it's gone through a lot of storms, and it's stood for many years.

It's still standing. But one day I noticed it was leaning to one side a bit.

So I went and got some pine poles and propped it up on its leaning side so it wouldn't fall.

Then I got to thinking about that and how much I was like that old barn.. I've been around a long time..

I've withstood a lot of life's storms. I've withstood a lot of bad weather in life, I've withstood a lot of hard times, and I'm still standing too. But I find myself leaning to one side from time to time, so I like to ask the Lord to prop us up on our leaning side, 'cause I figure a lot of us get to leaning at times.

Sometimes we get to leaning toward anger, leaning toward bitterness leaning toward hatred, leaning toward cussing, leaning toward a lot of things that we shouldn't . So we need to pray, 'Lord, prop us up on our leaning side, so we will stand straight and tall again, to glorify the Lord.''


If you stare at this barn for a second you will see who will help us stand straight and tall again..Do You See HIM?

Pass This on to others by telling them about this website who might need Proppin' Up. "In God we trust!"

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The Amazing Camel
and
It's Creator
(From Moody Press)

If you ever doubted that God exists,
Meet the Very Technical, Highly Engineered
Dromedary Camel.

When I'm hungry, I'll eat almost anything-
A leather bridle, a piece of rope, my master's tent,
Or a pair of shoes.

My mouth is so tough a thorny cactus doesn't bother it.
I love to chow down grass and other plants
That grow here on the Arabian desert

I'm a dromedary camel, the one-hump kind
That lives on hot deserts in the Middle East.
My hump, all eighty pounds of it,
Is filled with fat-my body fuel-not water as some people believe.
My Mighty Maker gave it to me because
He knew I wouldn't always be able to find food
As I travel across the hot sands.
When I don't find any chow, my body automatically
Takes fat from the hump, feeds my system,
And keeps me going strong.
This is my emergency food supply.

If I can't find any plants to munch, my body uses up my hump.
When the hump gets smaller, it starts to tip to one side.
But when I get to a nice oasis and begin to eat again,
My hump soon builds back to normal.

I've been known to drink twenty-seven gallons of water in ten minutes.
My Master Designer made me in such a fantastic way that
In a matter of minutes all the water I've swallowed
Travels to the billions of microscopic cells that make up my flesh.

Naturally, the water I swallow first goes into my stomach.
There thirsty blood vessels absorb and carry it to every part of my body.
Scientists have tested my stomach and found it empty
Ten minutes after I've drunk twenty gallons.

In an eight hour day I can carry a four hundred pound load
A hundred miles across a hot, dry desert
And not stop once for a drink or something to eat.
In fact, I've been known to go eight days without a drink,
But then I look a wreck.
I lose 227 pounds, my ribs show through my skin,
And I look terribly skinny.
But I feel great!
I look thin because the billions of cells lose their water.
They're no longer fat. They're flat.

Normally my blood contains 94 percent water, just like yours.
But when I can't find any water to drink,
The heat of the sun gradually robs a little water out of my blood.
Scientists have found that my blood can lose up to
40 percent of its water, and I'm still healthy.

Doctor's say human blood has to stay very close to 94 percent water.
If you lose 5 percent of it, you can't see anymore; 10 percent, you can't
Hear and you go insane; 12 percent, your blood is as thick as molasses
And your heart can't pump the thick stuff. It stops, and you're dead.

But that's not true with me.
Why?
Scientists say my blood is different.
My red cells are elongated. Yours are round.
Maybe that's what makes the difference

This proves I'm designed for the desert,
Or the desert is designed for me.
Did you ever hear of a design without a Designer?

After I find a water hole,
I'll drink for about ten minutes
And my skinny body starts to change almost immediately.
In that short time my body fills out nicely, I don't look skinny anymore,
And I gain back the 227 pounds I lost.

Even though I lose a lot of water on the desert,
My body conserves it too.
Way in the beginning when my intelligent Engineer made me,
He gave me a specially designed nose that saves water.
When I exhale, I don't lose much.
My nose traps that warm, moist air from my lungs
And absorbs it in my nasal membranes.

Tiny blood vessels in those membranes take that back into my blood.
How's that for a recycling system? Pretty cool, isn't it.
It works because my nose is cool.
My cool nose changes that warm moisture in the air
From my lungs into water.

But how does my nose get cool?
I breath in hot dry desert air,
And it goes through my wet nasal passages.
This produces a cooling effect, and my nose stays as much as
18 degrees cooler than the rest of my body.

I love to travel the beautiful sand dunes.
It's really quite easy, because
My Creator gave me specially engineered sand shoes for feet.
My hooves are wide, and they get even wider when I step on them.
Each foot has two long, bony toes with tough, leathery skin
between my soles, are a little like webbed feet.

They won't let me sink into the soft, drifting sand.
This is good, because often my master wants me to carry him
one hundred miles across the desert in just one day.
(I troop about ten miles per hour.)

Sometimes a big windstorm comes out of nowhere,
bringing flying sand with it.
My Master Designer put special muscles in my nostrils
that close the openings, keeping sand out of my nose
but still allowing me enough air to breathe.

My eyelashes arch down over my eyes like screens,
keeping the sand and sun out but still letting me see clearly.
If a grain of sand slips through and gets in my eye,
the Creator took care of that too.
He gave me an inner eyelid that automatically
wipes the sand off my eyeball just like a windshield wiper.

Some people think I'm conceited because I always walk around
with my head held high and my nose in the air.

But that's just because of the way I'm made.
My eyebrows are so thick and bushy
I have to hold my head high to peek out from underneath them.
I'm glad I have them though.
They shade my eyes from the bright sun.

Desert people depend on me for many things.
Not only am I their best form of transportation,
but I'm also their grocery store.
Mrs. Camel gives very rich milk
that people make into butter and cheese.
I shed my thick fur coat once a year,
and that can be woven into cloth.
A few young camels are used for beef,
but I don't like to talk about that.

For a long time we camels have been called
the "ships of the desert" because of the way
we sway from side to side when we trot.
Some of our riders get seasick.

I sway from side to side because of the way my legs work.
Both legs on one side move forward at the same time,
elevating that side.
My "left, right left, right" motion makes my rider feel like
he is in a rocking chair going sideways.

When I was six months old,
special knee pads started to grow on my front legs.
The intelligent Creator knew I had to have them.
They help me lower my 1000 pounds to the ground.

If I didn't have them,
my knees would soon become sore and infected,
and I could never lie down.
I'd die of exhaustion.

By the way,
I don't get thick knee pads because I fall on my knees.
I fall on my knees because I already have these tough pads.
Someone very great thought of me and knew I needed them.
He designed them into my genes.

It's real difficult for me to understand
how some people say I evolved into what I now am.
I'm very technical, highly engineered dromedary camel.
Things like me don't just happen.

They're planned on a drawing board
by Someone very brilliant,
Someone very logical.

John 1:1 says,
"In the beginning was the Word.
And the Word was with God,
and the Word was God."
The Word means "logical, intelligent One."

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July 6, 2010

A Beautiful Flower In A Broken Pot
Our house was directly across the street from the clinic entrance of Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore . We lived downstairs and rented the upstairs rooms to out-patients at the clinic.
One summer evening as I was fixing supper, there was a knock at the door. I opened it to see a truly awful looking man. "Why, he's hardly taller than my 8-year-old," I thought as I stared at the stooped, shriveled body. But the appalling thing was his face, lopsided from swelling, red and raw.
Yet his voice was pleasant as he said, "Good evening. I've come to see if you've a room for just one night. I came for a treatment this morning from the eastern shore, and there's no bus 'til morning."
He told me he'd been hunting for a room since noon but with no success, no one seemed to have a room. "I guess it's my face .... I know it looks terrible, but my doctor says with a few more treatments ..."
For a moment I hesitated, but his next words convinced me: "I could sleep in this rocking chair on the porch. My bus leaves early in the morning."
I told him we would find him a bed, but to rest on the porch.. I went inside and finished getting supper. When we were ready, I asked the old man if he would join us. "No, thank you. I have plenty." And he held up a brown paper bag.
When I had finished the dishes, I went out on the porch to talk with him a few minutes. It didn't take a long time to see that this old man had an oversized heart crowded into that tiny body. He told me he fished for a living to support his daughter, her 5 children, and her husband, who was hopelessly crippled from a back injury.
He didn't tell it by way of complaint; in fact, every other sentence was preface with a thanks to God for a blessing. He was grateful that no pain accompanied his disease, which was apparently a form of skin cancer. He thanked God for giving him the strength to keep going.
At bedtime, we put a camp cot in the children's room for him. When I got up in the morning, the bed linens were neatly folded and the little man was out on the porch.
He refused breakfast, but just before he left for his bus, haltingly, as if asking a great favor, he said, "Could I please come back and stay the next time I have a treatment? I won't put you out a bit. I can sleep fine in a chair." He paused a moment and then added, "Your children made me feel at home. Grownups are bothered by my face, but children don't seem to mind."
I told him he was welcome to come again.
And, on his next trip, he arrived a little after 7 in the morning. As a gift, he brought a big fish and a quart of the largest oysters I had ever seen! He said he had shucked them that morning before he left so that they'd be nice and fresh. I knew his bus left at 4:00 a.m. and I wondered what time he had to get up in order to do this for us.
In the years he came to stay overnight with us, there was never a time that he did not bring us fish or oysters or vegetables from his garden.
Other times we received packages in the mail, always by special delivery; fish and oysters packed in a box of fresh young spinach or kale, every leaf carefully washed. Knowing that he must walk 3 miles to mail these, and knowing how little money he had made the gifts doubly precious.
When I received these little remembrances, I often thought of a comment our next-door neighbor made after he left that first morning.
"Did you keep that awful looking man last night? I turned him away! You can lose roomers by putting up such people!"
Maybe we did lose roomers once or twice. But, oh!, if only they could have known him, perhaps their illnesses would have been easier to bear.
I know our family always will be grateful to have known him; from him we learned what it was to accept the bad without complaint and the good with gratitude to God.
Recently I was visiting a friend, who has a greenhouse, as she showed me her flowers, we came to the most beautiful one of all, a golden chrysanthemum, bursting with blooms. But to my great surprise, it was growing in an old dented, rusty bucket. I thought to myself, "If this were my plant, I'd put it in the loveliest container I had!"
My friend changed my mind. "I ran short of pots," she explained, "and knowing how beautiful this one would be, I thought it wouldn't mind starting out in this old pail. It's just for a little while, till I can put it out in the garden."
She must have wondered why I laughed so delightedly, but I was imagining just such a scene in heaven.
"Here's an especially beautiful one," God might have said when he came to the soul of the sweet old fisherman. "He won't mind starting in this small body."
All this happened long ago - and now, in God's garden, how tall this lovely soul must stand.
The LORD does not look at the things man looks at. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart." (1 Samuel 16:7b)
Friends are very special. They make you smile and encourage you to succeed. They lend an ear and they share a word of praise. Show your friends how much you care. Pass this on, and brighten someone's day.

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July 3, 2010

Kill'em and Eat'em
This came from a gent who runs a 2000 acre corn farm up around Barron , WI, not far from Oshkosh . He used to fly F-4Es and F-16s for the Guard and participated in the first Gulf War.
His story:
Recently, I went out to finish planting a field of corn and witnessed "The Great Battle". A golden eagle - big, with about a six foot wingspan - flew right in front of the tractor. It was being chased by three crows that were continually dive bombing it and pecking at it. The crows do this because the eagles rob their nests when they find them.
At any rate, the eagle banked hard right in one evasive maneuver, then landed in the field about 100 feet from the tractor. This eagle stood about 3 feet tall. The crows all landed too, and took up positions around the eagle at 120 degrees apart, but kept their distance at about 20 feet from the big bird. The eagle would take a couple steps towards one of the crows and they'd hop backwards and forward to keep their distance. Then the reinforcement showed up.
I happened to spot the eagle's mate hurtling down out of the sky at what appeared to be approximately Mach 1.5. Just before impact the eagle on the ground took flight, (obviously a coordinated tactic; probably pre-briefed) and the three crows which were watching the grounded eagle, also took flight thinking they were going to get in some more pecking on the big bird.
The first crow being targeted by the diving eagle never stood a snowball's chance in hell. There was a mid-air explosion of black feathers and that crow was done. The diving eagle then banked hard left in what had to be a 9G climbing turn, using the energy it had accumulated in the dive, and hit crow #2 less than two seconds later. Another crow dead.
The grounded eagle, which was now airborne and had an altitude advantage on the remaining crow, which was streaking eastward in full burner, made a short dive then banked hard right when the escaping crow tried to evade the hit. It didn't work - crow #3 bit the dust at about 20 feet AGL.
This aerial battle was better than any air show I've been to, including the war birds show at Oshkosh . The two eagles ripped the crows apart and ate them on the ground, and as I got closer and closer working my way across the field, I passed within 20 feet of one of them as it ate its catch. It stopped and looked at me as I went by and you could see in the look of that bird that it knew who's Boss Of The Sky. What a beautiful bird!
I loved it. Not only did they kill their enemy, they ate them. One of the best Fighter Pilot stories I've seen in a long time... There are no noble wars-- Only noble warriors

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June 12, 2010

JESUS & THE MUD PUDDLE
(You gotta believe a 6 year old)
Howard County Sheriff Jerry Marr got a disturbing call one Saturday afternoon a few months ago. His 6-year-old grandson, Mikey, had been hit by a car while fishing in Greentown with his dad.
The father and son were near a bridge by the Kokomo Reservoir when a woman lost control of her car, slid off the bridge and hit Mikey at a rate of about 50 mph. Sheriff Marr had seen the results of accidents like this and feared the worst. When he got to Saint Joseph Hospital, he rushed to the emergency room to find Mikey conscious and in fairly good spirits.
'Mikey, what happened?' Sheriff Marr asked.
Mikey replied, 'Well, Papaw, I was fishin' with Dad,and some lady runned me over, I flew into a mud puddle, and broke my fishin' pole and I didn't get to catch no fish!'
As it turned out, the impact propelled Mikey about 500 feet, over a few trees and an embankment and in to the middle of a mud puddle.
His only injuries were to his right femur bone,
which had broken in two places. Mikey had surgery to place pins in his leg. Otherwise the boy is fine.
Since all the boy could talk about was that his fishing pole was broken, the Sheriff went out to Wal-Mart and bought him a new one while he was in surgery so he could have it when he came out.
The next day the Sheriff sat with Mikey to keep him company in the hospital. Mikey was enjoying his new fishing pole and talked about when he could go fishing again as he cast into the trash can.
When they were alone Mikey, just as matter-of-fact, said, 'Papaw, did you know Jesus is real?'
'Well,' the Sheriff replied, a little startled. 'Yes, Jesus is real to all who believe in him and love him in their hearts.'
'No,' said Mikey. 'I mean Jesus is REALLY real.'
'What do you mean?' asked the Sheriff.
'I know he's real 'cause I saw him,' said Mikey, still casting into the trash can.
'You did?' said the Sheriff.
'Yep,' said Mikey. 'When that lady runned me over and broke my fishing pole, Jesus caught me in his arms and laid me down in the mud puddle.'
GIVES YOU GLORY BUMPS, DOESN'T IT?!

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GOD WILL DO THE REST
I asked the Lord to bless you
As I prayed for you today
To guide you and protect you
As you go along your way
His love is always with you
His promises are true
And when we give Him all our cares
You know He will see us through
So when the road you're traveling on
Seems difficult at best
Just remember I'm here praying
And God will do the rest.

FAITH IS NOT BELIEVING THAT GOD CAN....
IT IS KNOWING THAT HE WILL!

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June 8, 2010

"Old Barns"
A stranger came by the other day with an offer that set me to thinking.
He wanted to buy the old barn that sits out by the highway.
I told him right off he was crazy.
He was a city type, you could tell by his clothes, his car,
His hands, and the way he talked.

He said he was driving by and saw that beautiful barn
Sitting out in the tall grass and wanted to know if it was for sale.

I told him he had a funny idea of beauty.
Sure, it was a handsome building in its day. But then, there's
Been a lot of winters pass with their snow and ice and howling wind.
The summer sun's beat down on that old barn till all the paint's
Gone, and the wood has turned silver gray.

Now the old building leans a good deal, looking kind of tired.
Yet, that fellow called it beautiful..
That set me to thinking. I walked out to the field and just stood there,
Gazing at that old barn..

The stranger said he planned to use the lumber to line the walls
Of his den in a new country home he's building down the road.

He said you couldn't get paint that beautiful.
Only years of standing in the weather, bearing the storms and
Scorching sun, only that can produce beautiful barn wood.
It came to me then. We're a lot like that, you and I.
Only it's on the inside that the beauty grows with us.

Sure we turn silver gray too... And lean a bit more than
We did when we were young and full of sap.

But the Good Lord knows what He's doing.
And as the years pass He's busy using the hard weather of our lives,

The dry spells and the stormy seasons to do a job of beautifying
Our souls that nothing else can produce.

And to think how often folks holler because they want life easy!
They took the old barn down today and hauled it away
To beautify a rich man's house.

And I reckon someday you and I'll be hauled off
To Heaven to take on whatever chores the Good Lord
Has for us on the Great Sky Ranch.
And I suspect we'll be more beautiful
Then for the seasons we've been through here...
And just maybe even add a bit of beauty to our Father's house.

May there be peace within you today.
May you trust God that you are
Exactly where you are meant to be.
And I do sincerely Thank God for my wonderful friends and
Family who care about me even though I show signs of weathering!
Have a GREAT DAY!

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Unfold A Rose Bud
A new minister was walking with an older,
more seasoned minister in the garden one day.
Feeling a bit insecure about what God
had for him to do, he was asking the older preacher
for some advice.
The older preacher walked up to a rosebush
and handed the young preacher a rosebud and told him
to open it without tearing off any petals.
The young preacher looked in disbelief
at the older preacher and was trying to figure out
what a rosebud could possibly have to do
with his wanting to know the will of God
for his life and ministry.
But because of his great respect for the older preacher,
he proceeded to try to unfold the rose,
while keeping every petal intact.
It wasn't long before he realized
how impossible this was to do.
Noticing the younger preacher's inability
to unfold the rosebud without tearing it,
the older preacher began to recite
the following poem...

"It is only a tiny rosebud,
A flower of God's design;
But I cannot unfold the petals
With these clumsy hands of mine."
"The secret of unfolding flowers
Is not known to such as I.
GOD opens this flower so easily,
But in my hands they die."
"If I cannot unfold a rosebud,
This flower of God's design,
Then how can I have the wisdom
To unfold this life of mine?"
"So I'll trust in God for leading
Each moment of my day.
I will look to God for guidance
In each step of the way."
"The path that lies before me,
Only my Lord knows.
I'll trust God to unfold the moments,
Just as He unfolds the rose."

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I once read that a coincidence is just when God chooses to remain anonymous.......
The SPARROW at STARBUCKS
The song that silenced the cappuccino machine
It was chilly in Manhattan but warm inside the Starbucks shop on 51st Street and Broadway,
just a skip up from Times Square . Early November weather in New York City holds only the
slightest hint of the bitter chill of late December and January, but it's enough to send the
masses crowding indoors to vie for available space and warmth.
For a musician, it's the most lucrative Starbucks location in the world, I'm told, and consequently,
the tips can be substantial if you play your tunes right. Apparently, we were striking all the right
chords that night, because our basket was almost overflowing.
It was a fun, low-pressure gig - I was playing keyboard and singing backup for my friend who
also added rhythm with an arsenal of percussion instruments. We mostly did pop songs from
the '40s to the '90s with a few original tunes thrown in. During our emotional rendition of the
classic, "If You Don't Know Me by Now," I noticed a lady sitting in one of the lounge chairs across
from me. She was swaying to the beat and singing along.
After the tune was over, she approached me. "I apologize for singing along on that song. Did it
bother you?" she asked.
"No," I replied. "We love it when the audience joins in. Would you like to sing up front on the next
selection?"
To my delight, she accepted my invitation. "You choose," I said. "What are you in the mood to sing?"
"Well. ... do you know any hymns?"
Hymns? This woman didn't know who she was dealing with. I cut my teeth on hymns. Before
I was even born, I was going to church. I gave our guest singer a knowing look. "Name one."
"Oh, I don't know. There are so many good ones. You pick one."
"Okay," I replied. "How about 'His Eye is on the Sparrow'?"
My new friend was silent, her eyes averted. Then she fixed her eyes on mine again and said,
"Yeah. Let's do that one."
She slowly nodded her head, put down her purse, straightened her jacket and faced the center
of the shop. With my two-bar setup, she began to sing.
Why should I be discouraged?
Why should the shadows come?
The audience of coffee drinkers was transfixed. Even the gurgling noises of the cappuccino
machine ceased as the employees stopped what they were doing to listen. The song rose to
its conclusion.
I sing because I'm happy;
I sing because I'm free.
For His eye is on the sparrow
And I know He watches me.
When the last note was sung, the applause crescendoed to a deafening roar that would have
rivaled a sold-out crowd at Carnegie Hall. Embarrassed, the woman tried to shout over the din,
"Oh, you go back to your coffee! I didn't come in here to do a concert! I just came in here to get
somethin' to drink, just like you!" But the ovation continued. I embraced my new friend. "You,
my dear, have made my whole year! That was beautiful!"
"Well, it's funny that you picked that particular hymn," she said.
"Why is that?"
"Well . .." she hesitated again, "that was my daughter's favorite song."
"Really!" I exclaimed.
"Yes," she said, and then grabbed my hands. By this time, the applause had subsided and it
was business as usual.. "She was 16. She died of a brain tumor last week."
I said the first thing that found its way through my stunned silence. "Are you going to be okay?"
She smiled through tear-filled eyes and squeezed my hands. "I'm going to be okay. I just have to
keep trusting the Lord and singing his songs, and everything's going to be just fine." She picked up
her bag, gave me her card, and then she was gone.
Was it just a coincidence that we happened to be singing in that particular coffee shop on that
particular November night? Coincidence that this wonderful lady just happened to walk into that
particular shop? Coincidence that of all the hymns to choose from, I just happened to pick the
very hymn that was the favorite of her daughter, who had died just the week before? I refuse to
believe it.
God has been arranging encounters in human history since the beginning of time, and it's no
stretch for me to imagine that he could reach into a coffee shop in midtown Manhattan and turn
an ordinary gig into a revival. It was a great reminder that if we keep trusting him and singing
his songs, everything's gonna be okay.

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A lesson that should be taught in all schools . . And colleges
Back in September of 2005, on the first day of school, Martha Cothren, a social studies school teacher at Robinson High School in Little Rock , did something not to be forgotten.. On the first day of school, with the permission of the school superintendent, the principal and the building
supervisor, she removed all of the desks out of her classroom..
When the first period kids entered the room they discovered that there were no desks.
'Ms.. Cothren, where're our desks?'
She replied, 'You can't have a desk until you tell me how you earn the right to sit at a desk.'
They thought, 'Well, maybe it's our grades..'
'No,' she said.
'Maybe it's our behavior.'
She told them, 'No, it's not even your behavior.'
And so, they came and went, the first period, second period, third period. Still no desks in the classroom.
By early afternoon television news crews had started gathering in Ms.Cothren's classroom to report about this crazy teacher who had taken all the desks out of her room.
The final period of the day came and as the puzzled students found seats on the floor of the deskless classroom, Martha Cothren said, 'Throughout the day no one has been able to tell me just what he/she has done to earn the right to sit at the desks that are ordinarily found in this classroom.. Now I am going to tell you.'
At this s point, Martha Cothren went over to the door of her classroom and opened it.
Twenty-seven (27) U.S. Veterans, all in uniforms, walked into that classroom, each one carrying a school desk. The Vets began placing the school desks in rows, and then they would walk over and stand alongside the wall. By the time the last soldier had set the final desk in place those
kids started to understand, perhaps for the first time in their lives, just how the right to sit at those desks had been earned....
Martha said, 'You didn't earn the right to sit at these desks. These heroes did it for you. They placed the desks here for you. Now, it's up to you to sit in them. It is your responsibility to learn, to be good students, to be good citizens. They paid the price so that you could have the freedom to get an education. Don't ever forget it.'
By the way, this is a true story.
Please consider passing this along so others won't forget that the freedoms we have in this great country were earned by U.S. Veterans.

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The Wedding Gown That Made History
Lilly Friedman doesn't remember the last name of the woman who designed and sewed the wedding gown she wore when she walked down the aisle over 60 years ago. But the grandmother of seven does recall that when she first told her fiancé Ludwig that she had always dreamed of being married in a white gown he realized he had his work cut out for him.
For the tall, lanky 21-year-old who had survived hunger, disease and torture this was a different kind of challenge. How was he ever going to find such a dress in the Bergen Belsen Displaced Person's camp where they felt grateful for the clothes on their backs?
Fate would intervene in the guise of a former German pilot who walked into the food distribution center where Ludwig worked, eager to make a trade for his worthless parachute. In exchange for two pounds of coffee beans and a couple of packs of cigarettes Lilly would have her wedding gown.
For two weeks Miriam the seamstress worked under the curious eyes of her fellow DPs, carefully fashioning the six parachute panels into a simple, long sleeved gown with a rolled collar and a fitted waist that tied in the back with a bow. When the dress was completed she sewed the leftover material into a matching shirt for the groom.
A white wedding gown may have seemed like a frivolous request in the surreal environment of the camps, but for Lilly the dress symbolized the innocent, normal life she and her family had once led before the world descended into madness.
Lilly and her siblings were raised in a Torah observant home in the small town of Zarica, Czechoslovakia where her father was a melamed, respected and well liked by the young yeshiva students he taught in nearby Irsheva. He and his two sons were marked for extermination immediately upon arriving at Auschwitz . For Lilly and her sisters it was only their first stop on their long journey of persecution, which included Plashof, Neustadt, Gross Rosen and finally Bergen Belsen . A picture of Lilly Friedman and her parachute dress are on display in the Bergen Belsen Museum.
Four hundred people marched 15 miles in the snow to the town of Celle on January 27, 1946 to attend Lilly and Ludwig's wedding. The town synagogue, damaged and desecrated, had been lovingly renovated by the DPs with the meager materials available to them. When a Sefer Torah arrived from England they converted an old kitchen cabinet into a makeshift Aron Kodesh.
"My sisters and I lost everything - our parents, our two brothers, our homes. The most important thing was to build a new home."
Six months later, Lilly's sister Ilona wore the dress when she married Max Traeger. After that came Cousin Rosie. How many brides wore Lilly's dress? "I stopped counting after 17." With the camps experiencing the highest marriage rate in the world, Lilly's gown was in great demand. In 1948, when President Harry Truman finally permitted the 100,000 Jews who had been languishing in DP camps since the end of the war to emigrate, the gown accompanied Lilly across the ocean to America. Unable to part with her dress, it lay at the bottom of her bedroom closet for the next 50 years, "not even good enough for a garage sale. I was happy when it found such a good home."
Home was the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. When Lily's niece, a volunteer, told museum officials about her aunt's dress, they immediately recognized its historical significance and displayed the gown in a specially designed showcase, guaranteed to preserve it for 500 years.
But Lilly Friedman's dress had one more journey to make. Bergen Belsen, the museum, opened its doors on October 28, 2007. The German government invited Lilly and her sisters to be their guests for the grand opening. They initially declined, but finally traveled to Hanover the following year with their children, their grandchildren and extended families to view the extraordinary exhibit created for the wedding dress made from a parachute.
Lilly's family, who were all familiar with the stories about the wedding in Celle, were eager to visit the synagogue. They found the building had been completely renovated and modernized. But when they pulled aside the handsome curtain they were astounded to find that the Aron Kodesh, made from a kitchen cabinet, had remained untouched as a testament to the profound faith of the survivors. As Lilly stood on the bimah once again she beckoned to her granddaughter, Jackie, to stand beside her where she was once a kallah. "It was an emotional trip. We cried a lot."
Two weeks later, the woman who had once stood trembling before the selective eyes of the infamous Dr. Josef Mengele returned home and witnessed the marriage of her granddaughter.
The three Lax sisters - Lilly, Ilona and Eva, who together survived Auschwitz, a forced labor camp, a death march and Bergen Belsen - have remained close and today live within walking distance of each other in Brooklyn. As mere teenagers, they managed to outwit and outlive a monstrous killing machine, then went on to marry, have children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren and were ultimately honored by the country that had earmarked them for extinction.
As young brides, they had stood underneath the chuppah and recited the blessings that their ancestors had been saying for thousands of years. In doing so, they chose to honor the legacy of those who had perished by choosing life.

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A Wee Bit of a Scottish Story
His name was Fleming, and he was a poor Scottish farmer. One day, while trying to make a living for his family, he heard a cry for help coming from a nearby bog. He dropped his tools and ran to the bog.
There, mired to his waist in black muck, was a terrified boy, screaming and struggling to free himself. Farmer Fleming saved the lad from what could have been a slow and terrifying death.
The next day, a fancy carriage pulled up to the Scotsman's sparse surroundings. An elegantly dressed nobleman stepped out and introduced himself as the father of the boy Farmer Fleming had saved.
I want to repay you,' said the nobleman. 'You saved my son's life.'
'No, I can't accept payment for what I did,' the Scottish farmer replied waving off the offer. At that moment, the farmer's own son came to the door of the family hovel.
Is that your son?' the nobleman asked.
'Yes,' the farmer replied proudly.
'I'll make you a deal. Let me provide him with the level of education my own son will enjoy If the lad is anything like his father, he'll no doubt grow to be a man we both will be proud of.' And that he did.
Farmer Fleming's son attended the very best schools and in time, graduated from St. Mary's Hospital Medical School in London, and went on to become known throughout the world as the noted Sir Alexander Fleming, the discoverer of Penicillin.
Years afterward, the same nobleman's son who was saved from the bog was stricken with pneumonia.
What saved his life this time? Penicillin.
The name of the nobleman? Lord Randolph Churchill. His son's name? Sir Winston Churchill.
Someone once said: What goes around comes around.
Work like you don't need the money.
Love like you've never been hurt.
Dance like nobody's watching.
Sing like nobody's listening.
Live like it's Heaven on Earth.

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AN IRISH FRIENDSHIP WISH:

May there always be work for your hands to do
May your purse always hold a coin or two
May the sun always shine on your windowpane
May a rainbow be certain to follow each rain
May the hand of a friend always be near you
May God fill your heart with gladness to cheer you
and may you be in heaven a half hour before the devil knows you're dead.

A Father, Daughter & a Dog - story by Catherine Moore
"Watch out! You nearly broad sided that car!" My father yelled at me. "Can't you do anything right?"
Those words hurt worse than blows. I turned my head toward the elderly man in the seat beside me, daring me to challenge him. A lump rose in my throat as I averted my eyes. I wasn't prepared for another battle.
"I saw the car, Dad . Please don't yell at me when I'm driving.."
My voice was measured and steady, sounding far calmer than I really felt.
Dad glared at me, then turned away and settled back. At home I left Dad in front of the television and went outside to collect my thoughts.... dark, heavy clouds hung in the air with a promise of rain. The rumble of distant thunder seemed to echo my inner turmoil. What could I do about him?
Dad had been a lumberjack in Washington and Oregon . He had enjoyed being outdoors and had reveled in pitting his strength against the forces of nature. He had entered grueling lumberjack competitions, and had placed often. The shelves in his house were filled with trophies that attested to his prowess.
The years marched on relentlessly. The first time he couldn't lift a heavy log, he joked about it; but later that same day I saw him outside alone, straining to lift it. He became irritable whenever anyone teased him about his advancing age, or when he couldn't do something he had done as a younger man.
Four days after his sixty-seventh birthday, he had a heart attack. An ambulance sped him to the hospital while a paramedic administered CPR to keep blood and oxygen flowing.
At the hospital, Dad was rushed into an operating room. He was lucky; he survived. But something inside Dad died. His zest for life was gone. He obstinately refused to follow doctor's orders. Suggestions and offers of help were turned aside with sarcasm and insults. The number of visitors thinned, then finally stopped altogether. Dad was left alone..
My husband, Dick, and I asked Dad to come live with us on our small farm. We hoped the fresh air and rustic atmosphere would help him adjust.
Within a week after he moved in, I regretted the invitation. It seemed nothing was satisfactory. He criticized everything I did. I became frustrated and moody. Soon I was taking my pent-up anger out on Dick. We began to bicker and argue.
Alarmed, Dick sought out our pastor and explained the situation. The clergyman set up weekly counseling appointments for us. At the close of each session he prayed, asking God to soothe Dad 's troubled mind.
But the months wore on and God was silent. Something had to be done and it was up to me to do it.
The next day I sat down with the phone book and methodically called each of the mental health clinics listed in the Yellow Pages. I explained my problem to each of the sympathetic voices that answered in vain.
Just when I was giving up hope, one of the voices suddenly exclaimed, "I just read something that might help you! Let me go get the article.."
I listened as she read. The article described a remarkable study done at a nursing home. All of the patients were under treatment for chronic depression. Yet their attitudes had improved dramatically when they were given responsibility for a dog.
I drove to the animal shelter that afternoon.. After I filled out a questionnaire, a uniformed officer led me to the kennels. The odor of disinfectant stung my nostrils as I moved down the row of pens. Each contained five to seven dogs. Long-haired dogs, curly-haired dogs, black dogs, spotted dogs all jumped up, trying to reach me. I studied each one but rejected one after the other for various reasons too big, too small, too much hair. As I neared the last pen a dog in the shadows of the far corner struggled to his feet, walked to the front of the run and sat down. It was a pointer, one of the dog world's aristocrats. But this was a caricature of the breed.
Years had etched his face and muzzle with shades of gray. His hip bones jutted out in lopsided triangles. But it was his eyes that caught and held my attention. Calm and clear, they beheld me unwaveringly.
I pointed to the dog. "Can you tell me about him?" The officer looked, then shook his head in puzzlement. "He's a funny one. Appeared out of nowhere and sat in front of the gate. We brought him in, figuring someone would be right down to claim him. That was two weeks ago and we've heard nothing. His time is up tomorrow." He gestured helplessly.
As the words sank in I turned to the man in horror.. "You mean you're going to kill him?"
"Ma'am," he said gently, "that's our policy. We don't have room for every unclaimed dog."
I looked at the pointer again. The calm brown eyes awaited my decision. "I'll take him," I said. I drove home with the dog on the front seat beside me.. When I reached the house I honked the horn twice. I was helping my prize out of the car when Dad shuffled onto the front porch... "Ta-da! Look what I got for you, Dad !" I said excitedly.
Dad looked, then wrinkled his face in disgust. "If I had wanted a dog I would have gotten one. And I would have picked out a better specimen than that bag of bones. Keep it! I don't want it" Dad waved his arm scornfully and turned back toward the house.
Anger rose inside me. It squeezed together my throat muscles and pounded into my temples. "You'd better get used to him, Dad . He's staying!"
Dad ignored me.. "Did you hear me, Dad ?" I screamed. At those words Dad whirled angrily, his hands clenched at his sides, his eyes narrowed and blazing with hate. We stood glaring at each other like duelists, when suddenly the pointer pulled free from my grasp. He wobbled toward my dad and sat down in front of him. Then slowly, carefully, he raised his paw..
Dad 's lower jaw trembled as he stared at the uplifted paw Confusion replaced the anger in his eyes. The pointer waited patiently. Then Dad was on his knees hugging the animal.
It was the beginning of a warm and intimate friendship. Dad named the pointer Cheyenne . Together he and Cheyenne explored the community. They spent long hours walking down dusty lanes. They spent reflective moments on the banks of streams, angling for tasty trout. They even started to attend Sunday services together, Dad sitting in a pew and Cheyenne lying quietly at is feet.
Dad and Cheyenne were inseparable throughout the next three years.. Dad 's bitterness faded, and he and Cheyenne made many friends. Then late one night I was startled to feel Cheyenne 's cold nose burrowing through our bed covers. He had never before come into our bedroom at night.. I woke Dick, put on my robe and ran into my father's room. Dad lay in his bed, his face serene. But his spirit had left quietly sometime during the night.
Two days later my shock and grief deepened when I discovered Cheyenne lying dead beside Dad 's bed. I wrapped his still form in the rag rug he had slept on. As Dick and I buried him near a favorite fishing hole, I silently thanked the dog for the help he had given me in restoring Dad 's peace of mind.
The morning of Dad 's funeral dawned overcast and dreary. This day looks like the way I feel, I thought, as I walked down the aisle to the pews reserved for family. I was surprised to see the many friends Dad and Cheyenne had made filling the church. The pastor began his eulogy. It was a tribute to both Dad and the dog who had changed his life.
And then the pastor turned to Hebrews 13:2. "Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by this some have entertained angels without knowing it."
"I've often thanked God for sending that angel," he said.
For me, the past dropped into place, completing a puzzle that I had not seen before: the sympathetic voice that had just read the right article... Cheyenne 's unexpected appearance at the animal shelter. . ..his calm acceptance and complete devotion to my father. . and the proximity of their deaths. And suddenly I understood. I knew that God had answered my prayers after all.
Life is too short for drama or petty things, so laugh hard, love truly and forgive quickly. Live While You Are Alive. Forgive now those who made you cry. You might not get a second time.
And if you don't copy and send this to at least 4 people ---nobody cares?! But do share this with someone. Lost time can never be found.
And remember,
God answers our prayers in His time........not ours.

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3-23-2010 *23
THE SILENT SERMON
A member of a certain church, who previously had been attending services regularly, stopped going. After a few weeks, the pastor decided to visit him.
It was a chilly evening. The pastor found the man at home alone, sitting before a blazing fire. Guessing the reason for his pastor's visit, the man welcomed him, led him to a comfortable chair near the fireplace
and waited.
The pastor made himself at home but said nothing. In the grave silence, he contemplated the dance of the flames around the burning logs. After some minutes, the pastor took the fire tongs, carefully picked up a brightly burning ember and placed it to one side of the hearth all alone
then he sat back in his chair, still silent.
The host watched all this in quiet contemplation. As the one lone ember's flame flickered and diminished, there was a momentary glow and then its fire was no more. Soon it was cold and dead.
Not a word had been spoken since the initial greeting. The pastor glanced at his watch and realized it was time to leave. He slowly stood up, picked up the cold, dead ember and placed it back in the middle of the fire.
Immediately it began to glow, once more with the light and warmth of the burning coals around it.
As the pastor reached the door to leave, his host said with a tear running down his cheek, 'Thank you so much for your visit and especially for the fiery sermon. I will be back in church next Sunday'.
We live in a world today, which tries to say too much with too little. Consequently, few listen. Sometimes the best sermons are the ones left unspoken. Now I am going to preach to you one of those little, short sermons.
The Lord is my Shepherd ----- that's a Relationship!
I shall not want ----- that's Supply!
He makes me lie down in green pastures ----that's Rest!
He leads me beside the still waters -----that's Refreshment!

He restores my soul ----- that's Healing!
He leads me in the paths of righteousness --that's Guidance!
For His name sake ----- that's Purpose!
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death--that's Testing!
I will fear no evil ----- that's Protection!
For He is with me ----- that's Faithfulness!
Your rod and His staff they comfort me -----that's Peace and Assurance!
You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies------that's Hope!
You anoint my head with oil ----- that's Consecration!
My cup runs over ----- that's Abundance!
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life----that's Blessing!
And I will dwell in the house of the Lord -----that's Security!
Forever ----- that's Eternity!

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#21
Never judge someone....

'Some people!' snorted a man standing behind me in the Long line at the grocery store. 'You would think the manager would pay attention and Open another line, 'said a woman.

I looked to the front of the line to see what the hold up was and saw A well dressed, young woman, trying to get the machine
To accept her credit card. No matter how many times She swiped it, the machine kept rejecting it.

'It's one of them welfare card things. Damn people Need to get a job like everyone else,' said the man Standing behind me.

The young woman turned around to See who had made the comment.

It was me,' he said, pointing to himself.

The young lady's face began to change expression. Almost in tears, she dropped the welfare card onto the Counter and quickly walked out of the store. Everyone In the checkout line watched as she began running to Her car. Never looking back, she got in and drove way.

After developing cancer in 1977 and having had to use Food stamps; I had learned never to judge anyone, without knowing the circumstances of their life. This Turned out to be the case today.

Several minutes later a young man walked into the Store. He went up to the cashier and asked if she had Seen the woman. After describing her, the cashier told Him that she had run out of the store, got into her Car, and drove away.

'Why would she do that?' asked the man. Everyone in The line looked around at the fellow who had made the Statement. 'I made a stupid comment about the Welfare card she was using. Something I shouldn't Have said. I'm sorry,' said the man.

'Well, that's bad, real bad, in fact. Her brother was Killed in Afghanistan two years ago. He had three Young children and she has taken on that Responsibility. She's twenty years old, single, and Now has three children to support,' he said in a very Firm voice.

'I'm really truly sorry. I didn't know,' he replied, Shaking both his hands about.

The young man asked, 'Are these paid for?' pointing to The shopping cart full of groceries.

'It wouldn't take her card' the clerk told him.

'Do you know where she lives?' asked the man who had Made the comment.

'Yes, she goes to our church.'

'Excuse me,' he said as he made his way to the front Of the line. He pulled out his wallet, took out his Credit card and told the cashier, 'Please use my card. PLEASE!' The clerk took his credit card and began to Ring up the young woman's groceries.

Hold on,' said the gentleman. He walked back to his Shopping cart and began loading his own groceries onto The belt to be included. 'Come on people. We got three Kids to help raise!' he told everyone in line.

Everyone began to place their groceries onto the fast Moving belt. A few customers began bagging the food And placing it into separate carts.. 'Go back and get Two big turkeys,' yelled a heavyset woman, as she Looked at the man.

'NO,' yelled the man. Everyone stopped dead in their Tracks. The entire store became Quiet for several seconds. 'Four turkeys,' yelled the Man. Everyone began laughing and went back to work.

When all was said and done, the man paid a total of $1,646.57 for the groceries. He then walked over to The side, pulled out his check book, and began Writing a check using the bags of dog food piled near The front of the store for a writing surface. He Turned around and handed the check to the young man.. 'She will need a freezer and a few other things as Well,' he told the man.

The young man looked at the check and said, 'This is Really very generous of you.'

'No, ' said the man. 'Her brother was the generous one.'

Everyone in the store had been observing the odd Commotion and began to clap. And I drove home that Day feeling very American.

We live in the Land of the free, because of the Brave!!

Remember our Troops of Yesterday and Today!!!

A great example of why we should be kind and patient. Kindness is the language the blind can see and the deaf can hear.

May God's many blessings continue to be with you - ALWAYS!!!