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In April 1988 the evening news reported
on a photographer who was a skydiver. He had jumped from a plane along with
numerous other skydivers and filmed the group as they fell and opened their
parachutes. On the film shown on the telecast, as the final skydiver opened his
chute, the picture went berserk. The announcer reported that the cameraman had
fallen to his death, having jumped out of the plane without his parachute. It
wasn't until he reached for the absent ripcord that he realized he was
freefalling without a parachute.
Until that point, the jump probably seemed exciting and fun.
But tragically, he had acted with thoughtless haste and deadly foolishness.
Nothing could save him, for his faith was in a parachute never buckled on. Faith
in anything but an all-sufficient God can be just as tragic spiritually. --
Craig Brian Larson
~:~:~
"Every
mother has a favorite child. She cannot help it. She is only human. I have
mine - the child for whom I feel a special closeness, with whom I share a love
that no one else could possibly understand. My favorite child is the one who was
too sick to eat ice cream at his birthday party…who had measles at Christmas .
. . who wore leg braces to bed because he toed in... who had a fever in the
middle of the night, the asthma attack, the child in my arms at the emergency
ward. "My favorite child is the one who messed up the piano recital,
misspelled committee in a spelling bee, ran the wrong way with the football, and
had his bike stolen because he was careless. "My favorite child was
selfish, immature, bad-tempered and self-centered. He was vulnerable, lonely,
unsure of what he was doing in this world - and quite wonderful.
"All mothers have their favorite child. It is always the
same one: the one who needs you at the moment. Who needs you for whatever reason
- to cling to, to shout at, to hurt, to hug, to flatter, to reverse charges to,
to unload on -but mostly just to be there." -- Erma Bombeck
~:~:~
One night I had a dream. I dreamed I was walking along the
beach with the Lord and across the sky flashed scenes from my life. For each
scene I noticed two sets of footprints in the sand. One belonged to me and the
other to the Lord.
When the last scene of my life flashed before us I looked
back at the footprints in the sand. I noticed that many times along the path of
my life there was only one set of footprints. I also noticed that it happened at
the very lowest and saddest times in my life.
This really bothered me and I questioned the Lord about it.
"Lord, you said that once I decided to follow You, You would walk with me
all the way. But I noticed that during the most troublesome times in my life
there was only one set of footprints. I don't understand why, in times when I
needed You most, You should leave me."
The Lord replied, "My precious, precious child. I love
you and I would never, never leave you during your times of trial and suffering.
When you saw only one set of footprints.. it was then that I carried
you!" -- Margaret Powers
~:~:~
Laura Ingalls Wilder writes in Little House in the Ozarks
about an old dog, Shep, who was learning to sit up and shake hands: Try as he
would, he could not seem to get the knack of keeping his balance in the upright
position.... After a particularly disheartening session one day, we saw him out
on the back porch alone and not knowing that he was observed. He was practicing
his lesson without a teacher. We watched while he tried and failed several
times, then finally got the trick of it and sat up with his paw extended. The
next time we said, how do you do, Shep?' he had his lesson perfectly.
As he grew older, Shep's eyesight became poor and he didn't
always recognize friends. Wilder writes, "Once he made a mistake and barked
savagely at an old friend whom he really regarded as one of the family, though
he had not seen him for some time. Later, as we all sat in the yard, Shep seemed
uneasy.... At last he walked deliberately to the visitor, sat up, and held out
his paw, it was so plainly an apology that our friend said, 'That's all right,
Shep, old fellow! Shake and forget it!' Shep shook hands and walked away
perfectly satisfied."
~:~:~
On February 9, 1960, Adolph Coors III was kidnapped and
held for ransom. His body was found seven months later on a remote hillside. He
had been shot to death. Adolph Coors IV, who was fifteen years old at the time,
lost not only his father but his best friend. For years, young Coors hated
Joseph Corbett, the man who was sentenced to life for the slaying.
Then in 1975 Ad Coors became a Christian. He knew that this
hatred for Corbett blighted his growth in faith and also alienated him from
other people. Still, resentment seethed I within him. He prayed, asking God to
help him stop hating Corbett.
Coors eventually felt led to visit Corbett in the maximum
security unit of Colorado's Canon City penitentiary. Corbett refused to see him,
but Coors left a Bible with this inscription: "I'm here to see you today
and I'm sorry that we could not meet. As a Christian I am summoned by our Lord
and Savior, Jesus Christ, to forgive. I do forgive you, and I ask you to forgive
me for the hatred I've held in my heart for you." Coors later confessed,
"I have a love for that man that only Jesus Christ could have put in my
heart" Coors' heart, imprisoned by hatred, was at last set free.
~:~:~
Years after her experience in a Nazi Germany concentration
camp, Corrie ten Boom found herself standing face to face with one of the most
cruel and heartless German guards she had ever met in the camps. This man had
humiliated and degraded both her and her sister, jeering at them and visually
"raping" them as they stood in the delousing shower.
Now he stood before her with an outstretched hand, asking,
"Will you forgive me?" Corrie said, "I stood there with coldness
clutching at my heart, but I know that the will can function regardless of the
temperature of the heart. I prayed, 'Jesus, help me!' Woodenly, mechanically I
thrust my hand into the one stretched out to me and I experienced an incredible
thing. The current started in my shoulder, raced down into my arm and sprang
into our clutched hands. Then this warm reconciliation seemed to flood my whole
being, bringing tears to my eyes. 'I forgive you, brother,' I cried with my
whole heart. For a long moment we grasped each other's hands, the former guard,
the former prisoner. I have never known the love of God so intensely as I did in
that moment!"
When we forgive we set a prisoner free - ourselves!
~:~:~
A little boy visiting his grandparents was given his first
slingshot. He practiced in the woods, but he could never hit his target.
As he came back to Grandma's back yard, he spied her pet
duck. On an impulse he took aim and let fly. The stone hit, and the duck fell
dead.
The boy panicked. Desperately he hid the dead duck in the
woodpile, only to look up and see his sister watching. Sally had seen it all,
but she said nothing.
After lunch that day, Grandma said, "Sally, let's wash
the dishes."
But Sally said, "Johnny told me he wanted to help in the
kitchen today. Didn't you, Johnny?" And she whispered to him,
"Remember the duck!" So Johnny did the dishes.
Later Grandpa asked if the children wanted to go fishing.
Grandma said, "I'm sorry, but I need Sally to help make sup-per."
Sally smiled and said, "That's all taken care of. Johnny wants to do
it." Again she whispered, "Remember the duck." Johnny stayed
while Sally went fishing.
After several days of Johnny doing both his chores and
Sally's, finally he couldn't stand it. He confessed to Grandma that he'd killed
the duck.
"I know, Johnny," she said, giving him a hug.
"I was standing at the window and saw the whole thing. Because I love you,
I forgave you. I wondered how long you would let Sally make a slave of
you."
~:~:~
Victor Frankl was a psychiatrist and a Jew. While
imprisoned in the death camps of Nazi Germany, he suffered unthinkable torture
and innumerable indignities. His parents, brother; and wife all died in the camp
or were sent to the gas chamber. Frankl never knew from one moment to the next
if his path would lead to the ovens, or if he would be among the
"saved" who were forced to shovel the ashes of the ill-fated.
One day, alone and naked in a small room, Frankl became aware
of what he later called "the last of the human freedoms" - the control
over his inner environment and his basic identity He could decide within himself
how all of this was going to affect him, Through a series of mental, emotional,
and moral disciplines -largely using memory and imagination - he exercised this
freedom, and it grew.
Eventually, he felt he had more freedom than his captors.
They might have had the liberty to make choices in their external environment,
but he had more freedom, more internal power. He became an inspiration to the
prisoners around him, and even to some of his guards. He helped others find
meaning in their suffering and dignity in their prison existence.
Others may determine what happens to you on the outside, but
only you and God determine your inside fate.
~:~:~
One raw winter night the man heard an irregular thumping
sound against the kitchen storm door. He went to a window and watched as tiny,
shivering sparrows, attracted to the evident warmth inside, beat in vain against
the glass.
Touched, the farmer bundled up and trudged through fresh snow
to open the barn for the struggling birds. He turned on the lights, tossed some
hay in a corner, and sprinkled a trail of saltine crackers to direct them to the
barn. But the sparrows, which had scattered in all directions when he emerged
from the house, still hid in the darkness, afraid of him.
He tried various tactics: circling behind the birds to drive
them toward the barn, tossing cracker crumbs in the air toward them, retreating
to his house to see if they'd flutter into the barn on their own. Nothing
worked. He, a huge alien creature, had terrified them; the birds could not
understand that he actually desired to help.
He withdrew to his house and watched the doomed sparrows
through a window. As he stared, a thought hit him like lightning from a clear
blue sky: If only I could become a bird-one of them-just for a moment. Then I
wouldn't frighten them so. I could show them the way to warmth and safety. At
the same moment, another thought dawned on him. He had grasped the whole
principle of the Incarnation. -- Paul Harvey
~:~:~
The story goes that while Robert Smith was taking his
afternoon walk as part of his therapy in recovering from a massive heart attack,
the phone rang and his wife Delores answered. The call was from the Reader's
Digest Association Sweepstakes in New York. They were calling to inform the
Smith family that Robert had just won $1 ,500,000 and that in a few days the
certified check would be arriving. Well, as you can imagine, Delores was
absolutely ecstatic. Now all those dreams would come true!
But then she remembered, her husband was just getting over
his massive heart attack and the doctor had said no excitement over anything.
Delores was afraid that if she told him they had just won such a large sum, he
would have another heart attack and die. What should she do? After some thought,
she decided to call their pastor and ask his advice because he had had some
experience in breaking difficult news to families.
Delores dialed, "Hello, Pastor Baldwin... this is
Delores Smith."
The pastor replied, "Hi, Delores. How are you? And how
is Bob?"
"I'm fine, thank you. And so is Bob. He's recovering
nicely. But, I've got a problem and I need your advice."
"Sure, if I can help, I'll be glad to," the pastor
replied.
"Well, Pastor, I just got a call from The Reader's
Digest Sweepstakes informing me that Bob has just won $1,500,000!"
"That's great!" said the pastor, "But what's
the problem?"
"Well, I'm afraid that if I tell Bob, he'll get so
excited that he will have another heart attack and drop dead. Can you help
me?"
"Well, Delores, I think I can. Hold on, I'll be right
over."
So in about an hour, Bob is now back from his walk and he and
Delores and Pastor Baldwin are in the den having a nice chat. The pastor leans
toward Bob and says, "Bob, I've got a problem and need your advice."
"Sure, Pastor, if I can help, I'll be glad to," Bob
said.
The pastor takes a deep breath and goes on, "It's a
theoretical situation regarding Christian stewardship. What would a person -take
you for instance - do if all of a sudden you found out you had won $1,500,000?
What would you do with all that money?"
"That's easy," Bill replied, "I'd start by
giving $750,000 to the church."
Whereupon, Pastor Baldwin had a heart attack and dropped
dead! -- Robert Strand
~:~:~
A public school teacher made clear to me the complex ideas
of giving and receiving.
Evidently she noticed something about the way I held the book
in reading class and arranged for an eye examination. She did not send me to a
clinic; she took me to her own oculist, not as a charity case but as a friend.
Indeed, I was so intrigued with the activity that I did not realize exactly what
had happened until one day at school she gave me the glasses.
"I can't take them. I can't pay for them," I said,
embarrassed by my family's poverty.
She told me a story: "when I was a child, a neighbor
bought glasses for me. She said I should pay for them someday by getting glasses
for some other little girl. So, you see, the glasses were paid for before you
were born."
Then the teacher said the most welcome words that anyone had
ever said to me: "Someday you will buy glasses for some other little
girl."
She saw me as a giver. She made me responsible. She believed
I might have something to offer to someone else. She accepted me as a member of
the same world she lived in. I walked out of that room, clutching the glasses,
not as a recipient of charity, but as a trusted courier. -- Billie Davis
~:~:~
The story has been told of a museum guide who would take
his tour group to a darkened room, shine a light on a mass of string, color, and
apparent chaos and ask the group, "What do you think this is? "
"I don't know," was the inevitable reply.
He would then say, "Stand over there and watch." As
the group moved over to the other side of the room, he would turn on a
spotlight. It was instantly apparent that the mass of jumbled colored string
seen just a moment earlier was in fact an enormous tapestry-from the back side.
The real work had to be seen from a different perspective to understand what the
artist was creating.
So it is with God and his ways. We often look at them and ask
questions such as "Why?" and "How?" not because there is no
purpose in what God is doing, but because we are on the wrong side of eternity
to be able to have the perspective that would enable us to see the order and
pattern to God's work.
~:~:~
The nurse escorted a tired, anxious young man to the
bed-side of an elderly man. "Your son is here," she whispered to the
patient. She had to repeat the words several times before the patient's eyes
opened. He was heavily sedated because of the pain of his heart attack and he
dimly saw the standing young man.
He reached out his hand and the young man tightly wrapped his
fingers around it, squeezing a message of encouragement. The nurse brought a
chair next to the bedside. All through the night the young man sat holding the
old man S hand and offering gentle words of hope. The dying man said nothing as
he held tightly to his son.
As dawn approached, the patient died. The young man placed on
the bed the lifeless hand he had been holding, then he went to notify the nurse.
While the nurse did what was necessary, the young man waited. When she had
finished her task, the nurse began to offer words of sympathy to the young man.
But he interrupted her.
"Who was that man?" he asked.
The startled nurse replied, "I thought he was your
father"
"No, he was not my father," he answered. "I
never saw him before in my life."
"Then why didn't you say something when I took you to
him?" asked the nurse.
He replied, "I also knew he needed his son, and his son
just wasn't here. When I realized he was too sick to tell whether or not I was
his son, I knew how much he needed me." -- Author Unknown
~:~:~
An executive hirer, a "head-hunter" who goes out
and hires corporation executives for other firms, once told me, "When I get
an executive that I'm trying to hire for someone else, I like to disarm him. I
offer him a drink, take my coat off, then my vest, undo my tie, throw up my feet
and talk about baseball, football, family, whatever, until he's all relaxed.
Then, when I think I've got him relaxed, I lean over, look him square in the eye
and say "What's your purpose in life" It's amazing how top executives
fall apart at that question.
"Well, I was interviewing this fellow the other day had
him all disarmed, with my feet up on his desk, talking about football. Then I
leaned up and said, 'What's your purpose in life, Bob?' And he said, without
blinking an eye, 'To go to heaven and take as many people with me as I can.' For
the first time in my career I was speechless." -- Josh McDowell
~:~:~
Sadhu Sundar Singh and a companion were traveling through
a pass high in the Himalayan Mountains when they came across a body lying in the
snow. They checked for vital signs and discovered the man still alive, but
barely so. Sundar Singh prepared to stop and help this unfortunate traveler, but
his companion objected, saying, "We shall lose our lives if we burden
ourselves with him." Sundar Singh, however, could not think of leaving the
man to die in the snow without an attempted rescue on his part. His companion
quickly bade him farewell and walked on.
Sundar Singh lifted the poor traveler onto his back. With
great exertion on his part - made even greater by the high altitude and snowy
conditions - he carried the man onward. As he walked, the heat cast off by his
body began to warm the frozen man. He revived and soon, both were walking
together side by side, each holding the other up, and in turn, each giving body
heat to the other. Before long they came upon yet another traveler's body lying
in the snow. Upon closer inspection, they discovered him to be dead, frozen by
the cold.
He was Sundar Singh's original traveling companion.
Don't forget, by reaching out to help others you usually
forget your own problems.
~:~:~
A man and his girlfriend once went into a fast-food
restaurant and ordered a bag of chicken to go. Moments earlier, the manager had
placed the day's cash in a bag, and set it at the side of the serving counter.
When the clerk reached for the couple's order, he mistakenly picked up the bag
of money They paid for their chicken, got in their car, and drove to a park for
a picnic. When they opened the bag, they found that there were no drumsticks,
only greenbacks!
After briefly discussing their find, the couple decided the
right thing to do was to return the money When they arrived at the restaurant,
the manager was ecstatic. "I can't believe it!" he said. "I'm
calling the paper They'll take your picture and run the story for sure. You've
got to be the two most honest people in this city" The young man hurriedly
replied, "No, please don't call the paper! You see I'm a married man, but
this woman is not my wife."
~:~:~
There once was a fellow who, with his dad, farmed a little
piece of land. Several times a year they would load up the old ox-drawn cart
with vegetables and go into the nearest city to sell their produce. Except for
their name and the patch of ground, father and son had little in common. The old
man believed in taking it easy. The boy was usually in a hurry.. the go-getter
type.
One morning, bright and early, they hitched up the ox to the
loaded cart and started on the long journey. The son figured that if they walked
faster, kept going all day and night, they'd make the market by early the next
morning. So he kept prodding the ox with a stick, urging the beast to get a move
on.
"Take it easy, son," said the old man. "You'll
last longer."
"But if we get to the market ahead of the others, we'll
have a better chance of getting good prices," argued the son.
No reply. Dad just pulled his hat down over his eyes and fell
asleep on the seat. Itchy and irritated, the young man kept goading the ox to
walk faster. His stubborn pace refused to change.
Four hours and four miles down the road, they came to a
little house. The father woke up, smiled and said, "Here's your uncle's
place. Let's stop in and say hello."
"But we've lost an hour already," complained the
hotshot.
"Then a few more minutes won't matter. My brother and I
live so close, yet we see each other so seldom," the father answered
slowly.
The boy fidgeted and fumed while the two old men laughed and
talked away almost an hour. On the move again, the man took his turn leading the
ox. As they approached a fork in the road, the father led the ox to the right.
"The left is the shorter way," said the son.
"I know it," replied the old man, "but this
way is so much prettier.
"Have you no respect for timer' the young man asked
impatiently.
"Oh, I respect it very much! That's why I like to look
at beauty and enjoy each moment to the fullest."
The winding path led through graceful meadows, wildflowers,
and along a rippling stream-all of which the young man missed as he churned
within, preoccupied and boiling with anxiety. He didn't even notice how lovely
the sunset was that day.
Twilight found them in what looked like a huge, colorful
garden. The old man breathed in the aroma, listened to the bubbling brook, and
pulled the ox to a halt. "Let's sleep here," he sighed.
"This is the last trip I'm taking with you,"
snapped his son. "You're more interested in watching sunsets and smelling
flowers than in making money!"
"Why, that's the nicest thing you've said in a long
time," smiled the dad. A couple of minutes later he was snoring-as his boy
glared back at the stars. The night dragged slowly, the son was restless.
Before sunrise the young man hurriedly shook his father
awake. They hitched up and went on. About a mile down the road they happened
upon another farmer-a total stranger-trying to pull his cart out of a ditch.
"Let's give him a hand," whispered the old man.
"And lose more time" the boy exploded.
"Relax, son.. .you might be in a ditch sometime
yourself. We need to help others in need-don't forget that." The boy looked
away in anger.
It was almost eight o'clock that morning by the time the
other cart was back on the road. Suddenly, a great flash split the sky. What
sounded like thunder followed. Beyond the hills, the sky grew dark.
"Looks like big rain in the city," said the old
man.
"If we had hurried, we'd be almost sold out by
now," grumbled his son.
"Take it easy.. you'll last longer. And you'll enjoy
life so much more," counseled the kind old gentleman.
It was late in the afternoon by the time they got to the hill
overlooking the city, They stopped and stared down at it for a long, long time.
Neither of them said a word. Finally, the young man put his hand on his father's
shoulder and said, "I see what you mean, Dad."
They turned their cart around and began to roll slowly away
from what had once been the city of Hiroshima. -- Billy Rose
~:~:~
"In Germany, they first came for the Communists, and I
didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist; then they came for the Jews, and I
didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the Trade Unionists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Trade Unionist. Then they came for the
Catholics, and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for
me-and by that time no one was left to speak up." -- Martin Niemoller,
German pastor, victim of a Nazi concentration camp.
~:~:~
In the early days of Wycliffe Bible Translators in Mexico,
Cameron Townsend, the founder, tried to get permission from the Mexican
government to translate the Scriptures into the languages of the Indian tribes.
But the government was adamantly opposed to it. The official to whom he had to
appeal told him, "As long as I am in this office the Bible will never be
translated into the Indian languages-it would only upset them." Townsend
did everything he could think of, went to every official he could find, and had
all his Christian friends praying that God would open this door. But it seemed
to remain totally closed.
Finally, Townsend decided to give up pressing the issue. He
and his wife went to live in a little, obscure Indian village, learned the
language, ministered to the people as best they could, and waited for God to
move. It was not very long before Townsend noticed that the fountain in the
center of the village plaza produced beautiful, clear spring water, but that it
ran off down the hill and was wasted. He suggested that the Indians plant crops
in an area to which the water could easily be diverted and thus make use of it.
Soon they were growing twice as much food as before, and their economy blossomed
as a result. The Indians were grateful. Townsend wrote this up in a little
article and sent it to a Mexican paper he thought might be interested.
Unknown to him, that article found its way into the hands of
the President of Mexico, Lazaro Cardenas. The President was amazed that a gringo
would come to live in and help a poor Indian village where he couldn't even get
many of his own people to live. The President wanted to meet Townsend, so he,
his limousine, and his attendants drove to that little Indian village and parked
in the plaza.
Cameron Townsend is not one to miss an opportunity. He went
up to the car and introduced himself and, to his amazement, heard the President
say, "You're the man I've come here to see! Tell me more about your
work." When he heard what it was, he said, "Of course you can
translate the Scriptures into the Indian languages!" That began a
friendship that continued throughout the lifetime of President Cardenas. His
power and authority were used of God all those years to open doors to Wycliffe
Translators throughout Mexico.
~:~:~
The car was crowded, and there seemed to be no chance of a
seat. But as I entered, a man sitting by the door suddenly jumped up to leave,
and I slipped into the empty seat.
I've been living in New York long enough not to start
conversations with strangers. But, being a photographer, I have the peculiar
habit of analyzing people's faces, and I was struck by the features of the
passenger on my left. He was probably in his late 30s, and when he glanced up,
his eyes seemed to have a hurt expression in them. He was reading a
Hungarian-language newspaper, and something prompted me to say in Hungarian,
"I hope you don't mind if I glance at your paper.
The man seemed surprised to be addressed in his native
language. But he only answered politely, "You may read it now. I'll have
time later on.
During the half-hour ride to town, we had quite a
conversation. He said his name was Bela Paskin. A law student when World War II
started, he had been put into a German labor battalion and sent to the Ukraine.
Later he was captured by the Russians and put to work burying the German dead.
After the war, he covered hundreds of miles on foot until he reached his home in
Debrecen, a large city in eastern Hungary.
I myself knew Debrecen quite well, and we talked about it for
a while. Then he told me the rest of his story. When he went to the apartment
once occupied by his father, mother, brothers, and sisters, he found strangers
living there. Then he went upstairs to the apartment that he and his wife once
had. It was also occupied by strangers. None of them had ever heard of his
family.
As he was leaving, full of sadness, a boy ran after him,
callmg, "Paskin bacsi! Paskin bacsi!" That means "Uncle Paskin."
The child was the son of some old neighbors of his. He went to the boy's home
and talked to his parents. "Your whole family is dead," they told him.
"The Nazis took them and your wife to Auschwitz," Auschwitz was one of
the worst Nazi concentration camps. Paskin gave up all hope. A few days later,
too heartsick to remain any longer in Hungary, he set out on foot again,
stealing across border after border until he reached Paris. He man-aged to
immigrate to the United States in October 1947, just three months before I met
him.
All the time he had been talking, I kept thinking that
somehow his story seemed familiar. A young woman whom I met recently at the home
of friends had also been from Debrecen; she had been sent to Auschwitz; from
there she had been transferred to work in a German munitions factory. Her
relatives had been killed in the gas chambers. Later, she was liberated by the
Americans and was brought here in the first boatload of displaced persons in
1946.
Her story had moved me so much that I had written down her
address and phone number, intending to invite her to meet my family and thus
help relieve the terrible emptiness in her life.
It seemed impossible that there could be any connection between these two
people, but as I neared my station, I fumbled anxiously in my address book. I
asked in what I hoped was a casual voice, "Was your wife's name Marya?"
He turned pale. "Yes!" he answered. "How did
you know?"
He looked as if he were about to faint.
I said, "Let's get off the train." I took him by
the arm at the next station and led him to a phone booth. He stood there like a
man in a trance while I dialed her phone number.
It seemed hours before Marya Paskin answered. Later I learned
her room was alongside the telephone, but she was in the habit of never
answering it because she had so few friends and the calls were always for
someone else. This time, however, there was no one else at home and, after
letting it ring for a while, she responded.
When I heard her voice at last, I told her who I was and
asked her to describe her husband. She seemed surprised at the question, but
gave me a description. Then I asked her where she had lived in Debrecen, and she
told me the address.
Asking her to hold the line, I turned to Paskin and said,
"Did you and your wife live on such-and-such a street?"
"Yes!" Bela exclaimed. He was white as a sheet and
trembling.
"Try to be calm," I urged him. "Something
miraculous is about to happen to you. Here, take this telephone and talk to your
wife!"
He nodded his head in mute bewilderment, his eyes bright with
tears. He took the receiver, listened a moment to his wife's voice, then cried
suddenly, "This is Bela! This is Bela!" and he began to mumble
hysterically. Seeing that the poor fellow was so excited he couldn't talk
coherently, I took the receiver from his shaking hands.
"Stay where you are," I told Marya, who also
sounded hysterical. "I am sending your husband to you. We will be there in
a few minutes."
Bela was crying like a baby and saying over and over again,
"It is my wife. I go to my wife!"
At first I thought I had better accompany Paskin, lest the
man should faint from excitement, but I decided that this was a moment in which
no strangers should intrude. Putting Paskin into a taxicab, I directed the
driver to take him to Marya's address, paid the fare, and said good-bye.
Bela Paskin's reunion with his wife was a moment so poignant,
so electric with suddenly released emotion, that afterward neither he nor Marya
could recall much about it.
"I remember only that when I left the phone, I walked to
the mirror like in a dream to see if maybe my hair had turned gray," she
said later. "The next thing I know, a taxi stops in front of the house, and
it is my husband who comes toward me. Details I cannot remember; only this I
know-that I was happy for the first time in many years....
"Even now it is difficult to believe that it happened.
We have both suffered so much; I have almost lost the capability to not be
afraid. Each time my husband goes from the house, I say to myself, 'Will
anything happen to take him from me again?"'
Her husband is confident that no horrible misfortune will
ever befall them. "Providence has brought us together," he says
simply. "It was meant to be." -- Paul Deutschman
~:~:~
A young fella rushed into a service station and asked the
manager if he had a pay phone. The manager nodded, "Sure, over there."
The boy pushed in a couple of coins, dialed, and waited for an answer. Finally,
someone came on the line. "Uh, sir," he said in a deep voice,
"could you use an honest, hardworking young man to work for you?" The
station manager couldn't help overhearing the question. After a moment or two
the boy said, "Oh, you already have an honest, hardworking young man? Well,
okay. Thanks just the same."
With a broad smile stretched across his face, he hung up the
phone and started back to his car, humming and obviously elated. "Hey, just
a minute!" the station manager called after him. "I couldn't help but
hear your conversation. Why are you so happy? I thought the guy said he already
had somebody and didn't need you?" The young man smiled. "Well, you
see, I am the honest, hardworking young man. I was just checking up on my
job!" -- Charles Swindoll
~:~:~
During World War I, some Turkish soldiers
tried to steal a flock of sheep from a hillside near Jerusalem. The shepherd,
who had been sleeping, suddenly awakened to see his sheep being driven off on
the other side of the ravine. He could not hope to recapture his flock by force
single-handedly, but suddenly he had a thought. Standing up on his side of the
ravine, he put his hands to his mouth and gave his own peculiar call, which he
used each day to gather his sheep to him. The sheep heard the familiar sound.
For a moment they listened and then, hearing it again, they turned and rushed
down one side of the ravine and up the other toward their shepherd. It was quite
impossible for the soldiers to stop the animals. The shepherd was away with them
to a place of safety before the soldiers could make up their minds to pursue
them-and all because his sheep knew their master's voice.
~:~:~
Toward the end of the nineteenth century,
Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel awoke one morning to read his own obituary in the
local newspaper: "Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, who died
yesterday, devised a way for more people to be killed in a war than ever before,
and he died a very rich man."
Actually, it was Alfred's older brother who had died; a
newspaper reporter had bungled the epitaph.
But the account had a profound effect on Nobel. He decided he
wanted to be known for something other than developing the means to kill people
efficiently and for amassing a fortune in the process. So he initiated the Nobel
Prize, the award for scientists and writers who foster peace.
Nobel said, "Every man ought to have the chance to
correct his epitaph in midstream and write a new one." -- Doug Murren
and Barb Shurin
~:~:~
I was asked to be a counselor in a junior high camp.
Everybody ought to be a counselor in a junior high camp just once. A junior high
kid's concept of a good time is picking on people. And in this particular case,
at this particular camp, there was a little boy who was suffering from cerebral
palsy. His name was Billy. And they picked on him.
Oh, they picked on him. As he walked across the camp with his
uncoordinated body they would line up and imitate his grotesque movements. I
watched him one day as he was asking for direction. "Which.. way is..
.the.. craft.. shop?" he stammered, his mouth contorting. And the boys
mimicked in that same awful stammer, "It's...over...there...Billy."
And then they laughed at him. I was irate.
But my furor reached its highest pitch when on Thursday
morning it was Billy's cabin's turn to give devotions. I wondered what would
happen1 because they had appointed Billy to be the speaker. I knew that they
just wanted to get him up there to make fun of him. As he dragged his way to the
front, you could hear the giggles rolling over the crowd. It took little Billy
almost five minutes to say seven words.
"Jesus...loves...me...and...I...love...Jesus."
When he finished, there was dead silence. I looked over my
shoulder and saw junior high boys bawling all over the place. A revival broke
out in that camp after Billy's short testimony. And as I travel all over the
world, I find missionaries and preachers who say, "Remember me? I was
converted at that junior high camp." We counselors had tried everything to
get those kids interested in Jesus. We even imported baseball players whose
batting averages had gone up since they had started praying. But God chose not
to use the superstars. He chose a kid with cerebral palsy to break the spirits
of the haughty. He's that kind of God. -- Tony Campolo
~:~:~
The late Peter Marshall, an eloquent speaker and for
several years the chaplain of the United States Senate, used to love to tell the
story of "The Keeper of the Spring," a quiet forest dweller who lived
high above an Austrian village along the eastern slopes of the Alps. The old
gentleman had been hired many years ago by a young town council to clear away
the debris from the pools of water up in the mountain crevices that fed the
lovely spring flowing through their town. With faithful, silent regularity, he
patrolled the hills, removed the leaves and branches, and wiped away the silt
that would otherwise choke and contaminate the fresh flow of water. By and by,
the village became a popular attraction for vacationers. Graceful swans floated
along the crystal clear spring, the millwheels of various businesses located
near the water turned day and night, farmlands were naturally irrigated, and the
view from restaurants was picturesque beyond description.
Years passed. One evening the town council met for its
semiannual meeting. As they reviewed the budget, one man's eye caught the salary
figure being paid the obscure keeper of the spring. Said the keeper of the
purse, "Who is the old man? Why do we keep him on year after year? No one
ever sees him. For all we know the strange ranger of the hills is doing us no
good. He isn't necessary any longer!" By a unanimous vote, they dispensed
with the old man's services.
For several weeks nothing changed. By early autumn the trees
began to shed their leaves. Small branches snapped off and fell into the pools,
hindering the rushing flow of sparkling water. One afternoon someone noticed a
slight yellowish-brown tint in the spring. A couple days later the water was
much darker. Within another week, a slimy film covered sections of the water
along the banks and a foul odor was soon detected. The millwheels moved slower,
some finally ground to a halt Swans left as did the tourists. Clammy fingers of
disease and sickness reached deeply into the village.
Quickly, the embarrassed council called a special meeting
Realizing their gross error in judgment, they hired back the old keeper of the
spring...and within a few weeks the veritable river of life began to clear up.
The wheels started to turn, and new life returned to the hamlet in the Alps once
again.
Fanciful though it may be, the story is more than an idle
tale. It carries with it a vivid, relevant analogy directly related to the times
in which we live. What the keeper of the springs meant to the village, Christian
servants mean to our world. The preserving, taste-giving bite of salt mixed with
the illuminating, hope-giving ray of light may seem feeble and needless...but
God help any society that attempts to exist without them! You see, the village
without the Keeper of the Spring is a perfect representation of the world system
without salt and light. -- Charles R. Swindoll |