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WITandWISDOM(tm) - April 8, 1998 THOUGHTS: Some people regard discipline as a chore. For me, it is a kind of order that sets me free to fly. - Julie Andrews (Reader's Digest, October 1993) SPECIAL THOUGHTS: I have a friend who took his little seven-year-old boy fishing with him one day. They put out the trout line and then went up to the cabin. After an hour they went back down to the river to see if they had caught anything. Sure enough, there were several fish on the line. "I knew there would be, daddy," said the boy. "How did you know?" asked the father. "Because I prayed about it," said the child. So they baited the hooks again and put out the line and went back to the cabin for supper. Afterward they went back to the river; again, there were fish on the line. "I knew it," said the boy. "And how?" asked his father. "I prayed again." So they put the line back out into the river and went to the cabin. Before bedtime they went down again. This time there were no fish. "I knew there wouldn't be," said the child. "How did you know?" asked the father. "Because," said the boy, "I didn't pray about it this time." "And why didn't you?" asked his father. "Because," said the boy, "I remembered that we forgot to bait the hooks." I wonder if many times the apparent failures we have in prayer are not the result of some failure on our part, and not on God's. By Robert E. Goodrich, Jr., Signs of the Times, April 1961 http://www.pacificpress.com (Shared by Dale Galusha) THIS & THAT: Just inside the cemetery fence grew a huge nut tree. One day two boys filled a bucket with its nuts and sat down by the tree, out of sight, to divide them. "One for you, one for me. One for you, one for me," said the elder boy. The bucket was so full, several rolled out towards the fence. Cycling down the road by the cemetery was a third boy. Thinking that he heard voices from inside the cemetery, he slowed to investigate. Sure enough, he heard, "One for you, one for me. One for you." He knew what it was. "Oh my!" he shuddered, "It's Satan and St. Peter dividing the souls at the cemetery!" He rode down the road and found an old man with a cane, hobbling along. "Come quick!" he said, "You won't believe what I heard. Satan and St. Peter are down at the cemetery dividing the souls." "Shoo, you brat! Can't you see how hard it is for me to walk?" But after repeated pleas the man hobbled to the cemetery and heard, "One for you, one for me. One for you, one..." The old man whispered, "Boy, you've been tellin' the truth! Let's see if we can see the Devil himself." Shivering with fear, they edged toward the fence. Unable to see anything, they nonetheless heard the chant:., "One for you, one for me. One for you, one for me. And one last one for you. That's all. Let's go get those nuts by the fence, and we'll be done." They say the old man reached town 10 minutes before the boy! (Shared by Jim Rhinehart) ~~~~~~~~~~~~ Nothing makes it easier to resist temptation than a proper up ringing, a sound set of values, and witnesses. - Quips & Quotes, E. C. McKenzie TRIVIA: At one time Andrew Carnegie was the wealthiest man in America. He came to America from his native Scotland when he was a small boy, did a variety of odd jobs, and eventually ended up as the largest steel manufacturer in the United States. At one time he had forty-three millionaires working for him. In those days a millionaire was a rare person; conservatively speaking, a million dollars in his day would be equivalent to at least twenty million dollars today. (Shared by James S. Vuocolo via INSPIRE http://www.infoadvn.com/inspire/) |