Fishing Liecense

A man was stopped by a game warden in Northern Minnesota
recently with two buckets of fish leaving a lake well known for
its fishing. The game warden asked the man,
“Do you have a license to catch those fish?”

The man replied, “No, sir. These are my pet fish.”

“Pet fish?!” the warden said.

“Yes, sir. Every night I take these fish down to the lake and
let them swim around for a while. I whistle and they jump back
into their buckets, and I take em home.”

“That’s a bunch of hooey! Fish can’t do that!”

The man looked at the game warden for a moment, and then said,
“Here, I’ll show you. It really works.”

“O.K. I’ve GOT to see this!” the game warden replied.

The man poured the fish into the water and stood and waited.
After several minutes, the game warden turned to the man and
said, “Well?”

“Well, what?” the man asked.

“When are you going to call them back?” the game warden
prompted.

“Call who back?” the man asked.

“The FISH.”

“What fish?” the man asked.

The Giant

After dinner, the children turned to Jacob and asked if he
would tell them a story.

“A story about what?” asked Jacob.

“About a giant,” squealed the children.

Jacob smiled, leaned against the warm stones at the side of the
fireplace, and his voice turned softly inward.

“Once there was a boy who asked his father to take him to see
the great parade that passed through the village. The father,
remembering the parade from when he was a boy, quickly agreed,
and the next morning the boy and his father set out together.

“As they approached the parade route, people started to push in
from all sides, and the crowd grew thick. When the people along
the way became almost a wall; the father lifted his son and
placed him on his shoulders.

“Soon the parade began and as it passed, the boy kept telling
his father how wonderful it was and how spectacular were the
colors and images. The boy, in fact, grew so prideful of what
he saw that he mocked those who saw less saying, even to his
father,
‘If only you could see what I see.’”

“But,” said Jacob staring straight in the faces of the
children, “what the boy did not look at was why he could see.
What the boy forgot was that once his father, too, could see.”

Then as if he had finished the story, Jacob stopped speaking.

“Is that it?” said a disappointed girl. “We thought you were
going to tell us a story about a giant.”

“But I did,” said Jacob. “I told you a story about a boy who
could have been a giant.”

“How?” squealed the children.

“A giant,” said Jacob, “is anyone who remembers we are all
sitting on someone else’s shoulders.”

“And what does it make us if we don’t remember?” asked the boy.

“A burden,” answered Jacob.

~Author Unknown~

Daily

People often say that motivation (inspiration) doesn’t last.

Well, neither does bathing

…that’s why we recommend it daily.

~Zig Ziglar~

THE WINNER

THE WINNER

I was watching some little kids play soccer. These kids were only five or
six years old, but they were playing a real game – - a serious game _ two
teams, complete with coaches, uniforms, and parents. I didn’t know any of
them, so I was able to enjoy the game without the distraction of being
anxious about winning or losing – I wished the parents and coaches could
have done the same.

The teams were pretty evenly matched. I will just call them Team One and
Team Two. Nobody scored in the first period. The kids were hilarious. They
were clumsy and terribly inefficient. They fell over their own feet, they
stumbled over the ball, they kicked at the ball and missed it but they
didn’t seem to care. They were having fun.

In the second quarter, the Team One coach pulled out what must have been his
first team and put in the scrubs, except for his best player who now guarded
the goal.

The game took a dramatic turn. I guess winning is important even when you’re
five years old — because the Team Two coach left his best players in, and
the Team One scrubs were no match for them. Team Two swarmed around the
little guy who was now the Team One goalie. He was an outstanding athlete,
but he was no match for three or four who were also very good. Team Two
began to score. The lone goalie gave it everything he had, recklessly
throwing his body in front of incoming balls, trying valiantly to stop them.

Team Two scored two goals in quick succession. It infuriated the young boy.
He became a raging maniac — shouting, running, diving. With all the stamina
he could muster, he covered the boy who now had the ball, but that boy
kicked it to another boy twenty feet away, and by the time he repositioned
himself, it was too late — they scored a third goal.

I soon learned who the goalie’s parents were. They were nice, decent-looking
people. I could tell that his dad had just come from the office — he still
had his suit and tie on. They yelled encouragement to their son. I became
totally absorbed, watching the boy on the field and his parents on the
sidelines. After the third goal, the little kid changed. He could see it was
no use; he couldn’t stop them.

He didn’t quit, but he became quietly desperate futility was written all
over him. His father changed too. He had been urging his son to try harder -
yelling advice and encouragement. But then he changed. He became anxious. He
tried to say that it was okay – to hang in there. He grieved for the pain
his son was feeling.

After the fourth goal, I knew what was going to happen. I’ve seen it before.
The little boy needed help so badly, and there was no help to be had. He
retrieved the ball from the net and handed to the referee – and then he
cried. He just stood there while huge tears rolled down both cheeks. He went
to his knees and put his fists to his eyes – and he cried the tears of the
helpless and brokenhearted.

When the boy went to his knees, I saw the father start onto the field. His
wife clutched his arm and said, “Jim, don’t. You’ll embarrass him.” But he
tore loose from her and ran onto the field. He wasn’t supposed to – the game
was still in progress. Suit, tie, dress shoes, and all – he charged onto the
field, and he picked up his son so everybody would know that this was his
boy, and he hugged him and held him and cried with him. I’ve never been so
proud of a man in my life.

He carried him off the field, and when he got close to the sidelines I heard
him say, “Scotty, I’m so proud of you. You were great out there. I want
everybody to know that you are my son.” “Daddy,” the boy sobbed, “I couldn’t
stop them. I tried, Daddy, I tried and tried, and they scored on me.”

“Scotty, it doesn’t matter how many times they scored on you. You’re my son,
and I’m proud of you. I want you to go back out there and finish the game. I
know you want to quit, but you can’t. And, son, you’re going to get scored
on again, but it doesn’t matter. Go on, now.” It made a difference – I could
tell it did.

When you’re all alone, and you’re getting scored on – and you can’t stop
them – it means a lot to know that it doesn’t matter to those who love you.
The little guy ran back on to the field – and they scored two more times -
but it was okay.

I get scored on every day. I try so hard. I recklessly throw my body in
every direction. I fume and rage. I struggle with temptation and sin with
every ounce of my being – and Satan laughs. And he scores again, and the
tears come, and I go to my knees – sinful, convicted, helpless.

And my Father – my Father rushes right out on the field – right in front of
the whole crowd – the whole jeering, laughing world – and he picks me up,
and he hugs me and he says, “I’m so proud of you. You were great out there.
I want everybody to know that you are my son, and because I control the
outcome of this game, I declare you — The Winner.”

– Author Unknown

THE TEACUP

There was a couple who used to go to England to shop in the beautiful
stores. They both liked antiques and pottery and especially teacups. This
was their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary.

One day in this beautiful shop they saw a beautiful teacup. They said, “May
we see that? We’ve never seen one quiet so beautiful.” As the lady handed
it to them, suddenly the teacup spoke, “You don’t understand,” it said, “I
haven’t always been a teacup.”

“There was a time when I was red and I was clay. My master took me and
rolled me and patted me over and over and I yelled out, ‘Let me alone,’ but
he only smiled, ‘Not yet.’

“Then I was placed on a spinning wheel,” the teacup said, “and suddenly I
was spun around and around and around. ‘Stop it! I’m getting dizzy!’ I
screamed. But the master only nodded and said, ‘Not yet.’

“Then he put me in the oven. I never felt such heat. I wondered why he
wanted to burn me, and I yelled and knocked at the door. I could see him
through the opening and I could read his lips, as he shook his head, ‘Not
yet!’

“Finally the door opened, he put me on the shelf, and I began to cool.
‘There that’s better,’ I said. And he brushed and painted me all over. The
fumes were horrible; I thought I would gag. ‘Stop it, stop it!’ I cried.
He only nodded, ‘Not yet.’

“Then suddenly he put me back into the oven, not like the first one. This
was twice as hot and I knew I would suffocate. I begged. I pleaded, I
screamed. I cried. All the time I could see him through the opening
nodding his head saying, ‘Not yet!’

“Then I knew there wasn’t any hope. I would never make it. I was ready to
give up. But the door opened and he took me out and placed me on the
shelf. One hour later he handed me a mirror and said, ‘Look at yourself.’
And I did. I said, ‘That’s not me; that couldn’t be me. It’s beautiful.
I’m beautiful.’

“‘I want you to remember, then,’ he said, ‘I know it hurts to be rolled and
patted, but if I had left you alone, you’d have dried up. I know it made
you dizzy to spin around on the wheel, but if I had stopped, you would have
crumbled. I knew it was hot and disagreeable in the oven, but if I hadn’t
put you there, you would have cracked.

“‘I know the fumes were bad when I brushed and painted you all over, but if
I hadn’t done that, you never would have hardened; you would not have had
any color in your life. And if I hadn’t put you back in the second oven,
you wouldn’t survive for very long because the hardness would not have held.

“‘Now you are a finished product. You are what I had in mind when I first
began you.’”

Jeremiah 18:6 “O house of Israel, can I not do with you as this potter
does?” declares the LORD. “Like clay in the hand of the potter, so are you
in my hand, O house of Israel.”

– Author Unknown

THE STARFISH

Once upon a time there was a wise man who used to go to the ocean to do his
writing. He had a habit of walking on the beach before he began his work.
One day he was walking along the shore. As he looked down the beach, he saw
a human figure moving like a dancer. He smiled to himself to think of
someone who would dance to the day. So he began to walk faster to catch up.
As he got closer, he saw that it was a young man and the young man wasn’t
dancing, but instead he was reaching down to the shore, picking up something
and very gently throwing it into the ocean.

As he got closer he called out, “Good morning! What are you doing?”

The young man paused, looked up and replied, “Throwing starfish in the
ocean.”

“I guess I should have asked, why are you throwing starfish in the ocean?”

“The sun is up, and the tide is going out, and if I don’t throw them in
they’ll die.”

“But, young man, don’t you realize that there are miles and miles of beach,
and starfish all along it. You can’t possibly make a difference!”

The young man listened politely. Then bent down, picked up another
starfish and threw it into the sea, past the breaking waves and said, “It
made a difference for that one.”

– Author Unknown

– Story based on a poem titled “The Difference He Made” by Randy Poole

‘Life’s tough, it’s even tougher if you’re stupid.’

First-year students at Texas A&M’s Vet school were receiving their first anatomy class, with a real dead cow. They all gathered around the surgery table with the body covered with a white sheet.

The professor started the class by telling them, “In Veterinary Medicine it is necessary to have two important qualities as a doctor: The first is that you not be disgusted by anything involving the animal body.”

For an example, the Professor pulled back the sheet, stuck his finger in the butt of the dead cow, withdrew it and stuck it in his mouth.

“Go ahead and do the same thing,” he told his students.

The students freaked out, hesitated for several minutes. But eventually took turns sticking a finger in the anal opening of the dead cow and sucking on it.

When everyone finished, the Professor looked at them and said, “The second most important quality is observation. I stuck in my middle finger and sucked on my index finger. Now learn to pay attention.”

‘Life’s tough, it’s even tougher if you’re stupid.’

THE SMELL OF RAIN

THE SMELL OF RAIN

A cold March wind danced around the dead of night in Dallas as the doctor
walked into the small hospital room of Diana Blessing. Still groggy from
surgery, her husband David held her hand as they braced themselves for the
latest news.

That afternoon of March 10, 1991, complications had forced Diana, only
24-weeks pregnant, to undergo an emergency cesarean to deliver the couple’s
new daughter, Danae Lu Blessing.

At 12 inches long and weighing only one pound and nine ounces, they already
knew she was perilously premature. Still, the doctor’s soft words dropped
like bombs. “I don’t think she’s going to make it,” he said, as kindly as
he could. “There’s only a 10-percent chance she will live through the
night, and even then, if by some slim chance she does make it, her future
could be a very cruel one.”

Numb with disbelief, David and Diana listened as the doctor described the
devastating problems Danae would likely face if she survived. She would
never walk; she would never talk; she would probably be blind; she would
certainly be prone to other catastrophic conditions from cerebral palsy to
complete mental retardation; and on and on.

“No! No!” was all Diana could say. She and David with their 5-year-old son
Dustin, had long dreamed of the day they would have a daughter to become a
family of four. Now, within a matter of hours, that dream was slipping
away.

Through the dark hours of morning as Danae held onto life by the thinnest
thread. Diana slipped in and out of drugged sleep, growing more and more
determined that their tiny daughter would live and live to be a healthy,
happy young girl. But David, fully awake and listening to additional dire
details of their daughter’s chances of ever leaving the hospital alive, much
less healthy, knew he must confront his wife with the inevitable.

“David walked in and said that we needed to talk about making funeral
arrangements,” Diana remembers, “I felt so bad for him because he was doing
everything, trying to include me in what was going on, but I just wouldn’t
listen, I couldn’t listen.

I said, “No, that is not going to happen, no way! I don’t care what the
doctors say. Danae is not going to die! One day she will be just fine, and
she will be coming home with us!”

As if willed to live by Diana’s determination, Danae clung to life hour
after hour, with the help of every medical machine and marvel her miniature
body could endure but as those first days passed, a new agony set in for
David and Diana. Because Danae’s underdeveloped nervous system was
essentially “raw”, the lightest kiss or caress only intensified her
discomfort – so they couldn’t even cradle their tiny baby girl against their
chests to offer the strength of their love. All they could do, as Danae
struggled alone beneath the ultra-violet light in the tangle of tubes and
wires, was to pray that God would stay close to their precious little girl.
There was never a moment when Danae suddenly grew stronger. But as the
weeks went by, she did slowly gain an ounce of weight here and an ounce of
strength there.

At last, when Danae turned two months old, her parents were able to hold her
in their arms for the very first time. And two months later though doctors
continued to gently but grimly warn that her chances of surviving, much less
living any kind of normal life, were next to zero.

Danae went home from the hospital, just as her mother had predicted. Today,
five years later, Danae is a petite but feisty young girl with glittering
gray eyes and an unquenchable zest for life. She shows no signs,
whatsoever, of any mental or physical impairments. Simply, she is
everything a little girl can be and more but that happy ending is far from
the end of her story.

One blistering afternoon in the summer of 1996 near her home in Irving,
Texas, Danae was sitting in her mother’s lap in the bleachers of a local
ball park where her brother Dustin’s baseball team was practicing. As
always, Danae was chattering non-stop with her mother and several other
adults sitting nearby when she suddenly fell silent.

Hugging her arms across her chest, Danae asked, “Do you smell that?”

Smelling the air and detecting the approach of a thunderstorm, Diana
replied, “Yes, it smells like rain.”

Danae closed her eyes and again asked, “Do you smell that?”

Once again, her mother replied, “Yes, I think we’re about to get wet, it
smells like rain.”

Still caught in the moment, Danae shook her head, patted her thin shoulders
with her small hands and loudly announced, “No, it smells like Him. It
smells like God when you lay your head on His chest.”

Tears blurred Diana’s eyes as Danae then happily hopped down to play with
the other children.

Before the rains came, her daughter’s words confirmed what Diana and all the
members of the extended Blessing family had known, at least in their hearts,
all along.

During those long days and nights of her first two months of her life, when
her nerves were too sensitive for them to touch her, God was holding Danae
on His chest and it is His loving scent that she remembers so well.

– Author Unknown

THE BUZZARD, THE BAT & THE BUMMBLEBEE

The Buzzard:

If you put a buzzard in a pen that is 6 feet by 8 feet and is entirely open
at the top, the bird, in spite of its ability to fly, will be an absolute
prisoner. The reason is that a buzzard always begins a flight from the
ground with a run of 10 to 12 feet. Without space to run, as is its habit,
it will not even attempt to fly, but will remain a prisoner for life in a
small jail with no top.

The Bat:

The ordinary bat that flies around at night, a remarkable nimble creature in
the air, cannot take off from a level place. If it is placed on the floor
or flat ground, all it can do is shuffle about helplessly and, no doubt,
painfully, until it reaches some slight elevation from which it can throw
itself into the air. Then, at once, it takes off like a flash.

The Bumblebee:

A bumblebee, if dropped into an open tumbler, will be there until it dies,
unless it is taken out. It never sees the means of escape at the top, but
persists in trying to find some way out through the sides near the bottom.
It will seek a way where none exists, until it completely destroys itself.

People:

In many ways, we are like the buzzard, the bat, and the bumblebee. We
struggle about with all our problems and frustrations, never realizing that
all we have to do is look up! That’s the answer, the escape route and the
solution to any problem! Just look up!

Sorrow looks back, Worry looks around, but faith looks up!

Live simply, love generously, care deeply, speak kindly, and trust in our
Creator who loves us.

– Author Unknown

HAVE YOU SHARPENED YOUR AXE?

HAVE YOU SHARPENED YOUR AXE?

A young man approached the foreman of a logging crew and asked for a job.

“That depends,” replied the foreman. “Let’s see you fell this tree.” The
young man stepped forward and skillfully felled a great tree. Impressed,
the foreman exclaimed, “You can start Monday.”

Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday rolled by. Thursday afternoon the
foreman approached the young man and said, “You can pick up your paycheck on
the way out today.”

Startled, the young man replied, “I thought you paid on Friday.”

“Normally we do,” said the foreman. “But we’re letting you go today because
you’ve fallen behind. Our daily felling charts show that you’ve dropped from
first place on Monday to last place today.”

“But I’m a hard worker,” the young man objected. “I arrive first, leave last
and even have worked through my coffee breaks!”

The foreman, sensing the young man’s integrity, thought for a minute and
then asked, “Have you been sharpening your axe?”

The young man replied, “No sir, I’ve been working too hard to take time for
that!”

Our lives are like that. We sometimes get so busy that we don’t take time to
“sharpen the axe”

In today’s world, it seems that everyone is busier than ever but less happy
than ever. Why is that? Could it be that we have forgotten how to stay
sharp?

There’s nothing wrong with activity and hard work. But God doesn’t want us
to get so busy that we neglect the truly important things in life, like
taking time to pray, to read and study scripture or to listen to “the still
small voice of God.”

We all need time to relax, to think and meditate, to learn and grow. If we
don’t take time to sharpen the axe, we will become dull and lose our
effectiveness. Take time today to sharpen your axe!

– Author Unknown