The professor thundered, "Take your book in your right hand, and be seated!" At this harsh rebuke, the student held up his right arm. He didn't have a right hand! The other students shifted uneasily in their chairs.
For a moment the professor hesitated. Then he made his way to the student, put his arm around him, and with tears streaming from his eyes, said, "I never knew about it. Please, will you forgive me?"
His humble apology made a lasting impact on that young man. This story was told some time later in a large gathering of believers. At the close of the meeting a man came forward, turned to the crowd, and raised his right arm. It ended at the wrist. He said, "I was that student. Professor Blackie led me to Christ. But he never could have done it if he had not made the wrong right."
As can be imagined, he was afraid to leave the roof. His father kept yelling: "Jump! I will catch you." But the boy protested, "Daddy, I can't see you." The father replied, "But I can see you and that's all that matters." The boy jumped, because he trusted his father.
THEME: Adversity
STRENGTH FROM ADVERSITY
A man found a cocoon of a butterfly. One day a small opening appeared, he sat and watched the butterfly for several hours as it struggled to force its body through that little hole.
Then it seemed to stop making any progress. It appeared as if it had gotten as far as it could and it could go no farther.
Then the man decided to help the butterfly, so he took a pair of scissors and snipped off the remaining bit of the cocoon. The butterfly emerged easily. But it had a swollen body and small, shriveled wings.
The man continued to watch the butterfly because he expected that, at any moment, the wings would enlarge and expand to be able to support the body, which would contract in time.
Neither happened! In fact, the butterfly spent the rest of its life crawling around with a swollen body and shriveled wings. It was never able to fly.
What the man in his kindness and haste did not understand was that the restricting cocoon and the struggle required for the butterfly to get through the tiny opening were God's way of forcing fluid from the body of the butterfly into its wings so that it would be ready for flight once it achieved its freedom from the cocoon.
Sometimes struggles are exactly what we need in our life. If God allowed us to go through our life without any obstacles it would cripple us. We would not be as strong as what we could have been. And we could never fly.
THEME: Gratefulness
A THANKFUL HEART
The story is told of a man who found the barn where Satan stores the seeds he sows in the human heart: envy, greed, anger, hatred, lust, and so on. The man soon noticed that Satan had more seeds of discouragement than of any other kind. He learned that those seeds could be made to grow almost anywhere. When Satan was questioned, he reluctantly admitted that there was one place in which he could not get them to grow. "And where is that?" asked the man. Satan replied sadly, "In the heart of a thankful man."
Leonard Bernstein
THEME: Life's Trials
LEMON & LEMONADE
The people who consistently manifest the greatest joy in life are those who will simply not be discouraged by their circumstances. As author Zig Zigler says, "If life hands you a lemon, take the lemon and make lemonade."
Charles Goodyear's lemon was a prison sentence, resulting from a contempt of court citation. While in prison, Goodyear didn't complain. Instead, he became an assistant in the kitchen. While there, he continued to work on an idea. In the process he discovered a method for vulcanizing rubber. His lemon, a prison sentence, became our lemonade. We have better tires (Goodyear tires), which means better travel and a better way of life.
Sulat ni Pablo sa mga Taga-Filipos:
Ibig kong malaman ninyo, mga kapatid, na ang nangyari sa akin ay nakatulong nang malaki sa ikalalaganap ng Mabuting Balita. Nalaman ng mga bantay sa palasyo at ng iba pang narito na ako'y nabilanggo dahil sa pagiging tagasunod ni Kristo. At ang karamhihan sa mga kapatid ay lalong tumibay sa kanilang pananalig sa Panginoon. Hindi lamang iyon, lalo pang lumakas ang kanilang loob na ipangaral ang salita. (Phil 1:12-14)
THEME: Obedience
GOD'S WILL
There are peculiar storms in the Indian Ocean... typhoons and monsoons. They are peculiar in that they do not move very rapidly. They do not move practically at all from east to west, or north to south; instead, they play around in a circle.
F. W. Troy was told by a sea captain that before the navigators understood the characteristics of these storms, if they tried to come out of them, they foundered. "Now," he said, "when we run into a monsoon, we locate its center, and we go around it. By and by we narrow the circle. When we get into the center, we are in a dead calm."
This is like God's will. Try to get out of it, and you will find it a destructive force. Get into it, and you are in a calm, and you find it is good, and acceptable, and perfect, as it is so graphically described by the Apostle Paul in the twelfth chapter of the Epistle to the Romans.
Alliance Weekly
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