Dec. 22, 2008 - 3900 Marbles

This time of year there are a lot of emails with all the stories that circulate year after year but I hadn't heard this one before and it really touched me so I wanted to share it.

The older I get, the more I enjoy Saturday mornings. Perhaps it's
the quiet solitude that comes with being the first to rise, or maybe
it's the unbounded joy of not having to be at work. Either way, the
first few hours of a Saturday morning are most enjoyable.

A few weeks ago, I was shuffling toward the garage with a steaming
cup of coffee in one hand and the morning paper in the other. What
began as a typical Saturday morning turned into one of those lessons
that life seems to hand you from time to time. Let me tell you about it:


I turned the dial up into the phone portion of the band on my ham radio in order to listen to a Saturday morning swap net. Along the
way, I came across an older sounding chap, with a tremendous signal
and a golden voice. You know the kind; he sounded like he should be
in the broadcasting business. He was telling whom-ever he was
talking with something about "a thousand marbles." I was intrigued
and stopped to listen to what he had to say


"Well, Tom, it sure sounds like you're busy with your job. I'm sure
they pay you well but it's a shame you have to be away from home and
your family so much. Hard to believe a young fellow should have to
work sixty or seventy hours a week to make ends meet. It's too bad
you missed your daughter's "dance recital" he continued. ;"Let me
tell you something that has helped me keep my own priorities." And
that's when he began to explain his theory of a "thousand marbles."


"You see, I sat down one day and did a little arithmetic. The
average person lives about seventy-five years. I know, some live
more and some live less, but on average, folks live about seventy-five years.


"Now then, I multiplied 75 times 52 and I came up with 3900, which
is the number of Saturdays that the average person has in their
entire lifetime. Now, stick with me, Tom, I'm getting to the important part.


It took me until I was fifty-five years old to think about all this
in any detail", he went on, "and by that time I had lived through
over twenty-eight hundred Saturdays." "I got to thinking that if I
lived to be seventy-five, I only had about a thousand of them left
to enjoy. So I went to a toy store and bought every single marble
they had. I ended up having to visit three toy stores to round up
1000 marbles I took them home and put them inside a large, clear
plastic container right here in the shack next to my gear."


"Every Saturday since then, I have taken one marble out and thrown
it away. I found that by watching the marbles diminish, I focused
more on the really important things in life. There's nothing like
watching your time here on this earth run out to help get your
priorities straight."


"Now let me tell you one last thing before I sign-off with you and
take my lovely wife out for breakfast. This morning, I took the very
last marble out of the container. I figure that if I make it until
next Saturday then I have been given a little extra time. And the
one thing we can all use is a little more time."


"It was nice to meet you Tom, I hope you spend more time with your
family, and I hope to meet you again here on the band. This is a 75
Year old Man, K9NZQ, clear and going QRT, good morning!"

You could have heard a pin drop on the band when this fellow signed
off. I guess he gave us all a lot to think about. I had planned to
work on the antenna that morning, and then I was going to meet up
with a few hams to work on the next club newsletter.


Instead, I went upstairs and woke my wife up with a kiss. "C'mon
honey, I'm taking you and the kids to breakfast." "What brought this
on?" she asked with a smile. "Oh, nothing special, it's just been a
long time since we spent a Saturday together with the kids. And hey,
can we stop at a toy store while we're out? I need to buy some marbles.

Aug. 28, 2008 - A Carrot, An Egg and a Cup of Coffee

A Carrot, An Egg and a Cup of Coffee

You will never look at a cup of coffee the same way again.

A young woman went to her mother and told her about her life and how things were so hard for her. She did not know how she was going to make it and wanted to give up, She was tired of fighting and struggling. It seemed as one problem was solved, a new one arose.

Her mother took her to the kitchen. She filled three pots with water and placed each on a high fire. Soon the pots came to boil. In the first she placed carrots, in the second she placed eggs, and in the last she placed ground coffee beans.

She let them sit and boil; without saying a word. In about twenty minutes she turned off the burners. She fished the carrots out and placed them in a bowl. She pulled the eggs out and placed them in a bowl. Then she ladled the coffee out and placed it in a bowl.

Turning to her daughter, she asked, ‘ Tell me what you see.’ ‘Carrots, eggs, and coffee,’ she replied. Her mother brought her closer and asked her to feel the carrots. She did and noted that they were soft. The mother then asked the daughter to take an egg and break it. After pulling off the shell, she observed the hard boiled egg. Finally, the mother asked the daughter to sip the coffee. The daughter smiled as she tasted its rich aroma.

The daughter then asked, ‘What does it mean, mother?’ Her mother explained that each of these objects had faced the same adversity: boiling water. Each reacted differently. The carrot went in strong, hard, and unrelenting. However, after being subjected to the boiling water, it softened and became weak. The egg had been fragile. Its thin outer shell had protected its liquid interior, but after sitting through the boiling water, its inside became hardened. The ground coffee beans were unique, however. After they were in the boiling water, they had changed the water.

‘Which are you?’ she asked her daughter. ‘When adversity knocks on your door, how do you respond? Are you a carrot, an egg or a coffee bean?

Think of this: Which am I?

Am I the carrot that seems strong, but with pain and adversity do I wilt and become soft and lose my strength?

Am I the egg that starts with a malleable heart, but changes with the heat? Did I have a fluid spirit, but after a death, a breakup, a financial hardship or some other trial, have I become hardened and stiff? Does my shell look the same, but on the inside am I bitter and tough with a stiff spirit and hardened heart?

Or am I like the coffee bean? The bean actually changes the hot water, the very circumstance that brings the pain. When the water gets hot, it releases the fragrance and flavor. If you are like the bean, when things are at their worst, you get better and change the situation around you. When the hour is the darkest and trials are their greatest do you elevate yourself to another level? How do you handle adversity?  Are you a carrot, an egg or a coffee bean?

May you have enough happiness to make you sweet, enough trials to make you strong, enough sorrow to keep you human and enough hope to make you happy. The happiest of people don’t necessarily have the best of everything; they just make the most of everything that comes along their way. The brightest future will always be based on a forgotten past; you can't go forward in life until you let go of your past failures and heartaches. When you were born, you were crying and everyone around you was smiling. Live your life so at the end, you're the one who is smiling and everyone around you is crying.

May we all be COFFEE!!!!!!!

May. 25, 2008 - The Rich Family in Church

This story really touched me.  Talk about true sacrificial giving!

THE RICH FAMILY IN CHURCH

By Eddie Ogan

I'll never forget Easter 1946.

I was 14, my little sister Ocy was 12, and my older sister Darlene 16.

We lived at home with our mother, and the four of us knew what it was
to do without many things.

My dad had died five years before, leaving Mom with seven school kids
to raise and no money.

By 1946 my older sisters were married and my brothers had left home.
A month before Easter the pastor of our church announced that a
special Easter offering would be taken to help a poor family.

He asked everyone to save and give sacrificially.

When we got home, we talked about what we could do.

We decided to buy 50 pounds of potatoes and live on them for a month.

This would allow us to save $20 of our grocery money for the
offering. When we thought that if we kept our electric lights turned
out as much as possible and didn't listen to the radio, we'd save
money on that month's electric bill.

Darlene got as many house and yard cleaning jobs as possible, and
both of us babysat for everyone we could.

For 15 cents we could buy enough cotton loops to make three pot
holders to sell for $1.

We made $20 on pot holders. That month was one of the best of our
lives.

Every day we counted the money to see how much we had saved. At
night we'd sit in the dark and talk

about how the poor family was going to enjoy having the money the
church would give them.

We had about 80 people in church, so figured that whatever amount
of money we had to give, the

offering would surely be 20 times that much.

After all, every Sunday the pastor had reminded everyone to save for
the sacrificial offering.

The day before Easter, Ocy and I walked to the grocery store and got
the manager to give us

three crisp $20 bills and one $10 bill for all our change.

We ran all the way home to show Mom and Darlene. We had never had
so much money before.

That night we were so excited we could hardly sleep. We didn't care
that we wouldn't have new clothes for Easter; we had $70 for the
sacrificial offering.

We could hardly wait to get to church!

On Sunday morning, rain was pouring.

We didn't own an umbrella, and the church was over a mile from our
home, but it didn't seem to matter how wet we got.

Darlene had cardboard in her shoes to fill the holes. The cardboard
came apart, and her feet got wet.

But we sat in church proudly.

I heard some teenagers talking about the Smith girls having on their
old dresses. I looked at them in their new clothes, and I felt rich.

When the sacrificial offering was taken, we were sitting on the
second row from the front.

Mom put in the $10 bill, and each of us kids put in a $20.

As we walked home after church, we sang all the way.

At lunch Mom had a surprise for us. She had bought a dozen eggs, and
we had boiled

Easter eggs with our fried potatoes!

Late that afternoon the minister drove up in his car. Mom went to
the door, talked with him for a moment, and then came back with an
envelope in her hand.

We asked what it was, but she didn't say a word. She opened the
envelope and out fell a bunch of money. There were three crisp $20
bills, one $10 and seventeen $1 bills.

Mom put the money back in the envelope. We didn't talk, just sat and
stared at the floor.

We had gone from feeling like millionaires to feeling like poor white
trash. We kids had such a happy life that we felt sorry for anyone
who didn't have our Mom and Dad for parents and a house full of
brothers and sisters and other kids visiting constantly.

We thought it was fun to share silverware and see whether we got the
spoon or the fork that night.

We had two knifes that we passed around to whoever needed them. I
knew we didn't have a lot of things other people had, but I'd never
thought we were poor.

That Easter day I found out we were.

The minister had brought us the money for the poor family, so we
must be poor.

I didn't like being poor. I looked at my dress and worn-out shoes
and felt so ashamed

--I didn't even want to go back to church.

Everyone there probably already knew we were poor!

I thought about school. I was in the ninth grade and at the top of
my class of over 100 students.

I wondered if the kids at school knew that we were poor.

I decided that I could quit school since I had finished the eighth
grade. That was all the law required at that time.

We sat in silence for a long time. Then it got dark, and we went to
bed.

All that week, we girls went to school and came home, and no one
talked much.

Finally on Saturday, Mom asked us what we wanted to do with the
money.

What did poor people do with money? We didn't know. We'd never
known we were poor.

We didn't want to go to church on Sunday, but Mom said we had to.

Although it was a sunny day, we didn't talk on the way.

Mom started to sing, but no one joined in and she only sang one verse.

At church we had a missionary speaker.

He talked about how churches in Africa made buildings out of sun
dried bricks, but they needed money to buy roofs. He said $100 would
put a roof on a church.

The minister said, "Can't we all sacrifice to help these poor
people?"

We looked at each other and smiled for the first time in a week.

Mom reached into her purse and pulled out the envelope. She passed
it to Darlene. Darlene gave

it to me, and it I handed it to Ocy. Ocy put it in the offering.

When the offering was counted, the minister announced that it was a
little over $100.

The missionary was excited. He hadn't expected such a large
offering from our small church.

He said, "You must have some rich people in this church."

Suddenly it struck us! We had given $87 of that "little over $100."
We were the rich family in the church!

Hadn't the missionary said so? From that day on I've never been
poor again.

I've always remembered how rich I am because I have Jesus