Rich Beyond Words

Once there was an emperor in the Far East who was growing old and knew it was coming time to choose his successor.
Instead of choosing one of his assistants, or one of his own children, he decided to do something different.

He called all the young people in the kingdom together one day. He said, “It has come time for me to step down and to choose the next emperor. I have decided to choose one of you.” The kids were shocked! But the emperor continued. “I am going to give each one of you a seed today. One seed. It is a very special seed. I want you to go home, plant the seed, water it and come back here one year from today with what you have grown from this one seed. I will then judge the plants that you bring to me, and the one I choose will be the next emperor of the kingdom!”

There was one boy named Ling who was there that day and he, like the others, received a seed. He went home and excitedly told his mother the whole story. She helped him get a pot and some planting soil, and he planted the seed and watered it carefully. Every day he would water it and watch to see if it had grown.

After about three weeks, some of the other youths began to talk about their seeds and the plants that were beginning to grow. Ling kept going home and checking his seed, but nothing ever grew. Three weeks, four weeks, five weeks went by. Still nothing.

By now others were talking about their plants but Ling didn’t have a plant, and he felt like a failure. Six months went by, still nothing in Ling’s pot. He just knew he had killed his seed. Everyone else had trees and tall plants, but he had nothing. Ling didn’t say anything to his friends, however. He just kept waiting for his seed to grow.

A year finally went by and all the youths of the kingdom brought their plants to the emperor for inspection. Ling told his mother that he wasn’t going to take an empty pot.
But she encouraged him to go, and to take his pot, and to be honest about what happened. Ling felt sick to his stomach, but he knew his mother was right. He took his empty pot to the palace.

When Ling arrived, he was amazed at the variety of plants grown by all the other youths. They were beautiful, in all shapes and sizes. Ling put his empty pot on the floor and many of the other kinds laughed at him. A few felt sorry for him and just said, “Hey nice try.”

When the emperor arrived, he surveyed the room and greeted the young people. Ling just tried to hide in the back. “My, what great plants, trees and flowers you have grown,” said the emperor. “Today, one of you will be appointed the next emperor!”

All of a sudden, the emperor spotted Ling at the back of the room with his empty pot. He ordered his guards to bring him to the front. Ling was terrified. “The emperor knows I’m a failure! Maybe he will have me killed!”

When Ling got to the front, the Emperor asked his name.
“My name is Ling,” he replied. All the kids were laughing and making fun of him. The emperor asked everyone to quiet down. He looked at Ling, and then announced to the crowd, “Behold your new emperor! His name is Ling!” Ling couldn’t believe it. Ling couldn’t even grow his seed. How could he be the new emperor?

Then the emperor said, “One year ago today, I gave everyone here a seed. I told you to take the seed, plant it, water it, and bring it back to me today. But I gave you all boiled seeds which would not grow. All of you, except Ling, have brought me trees and plants and flowers. When you found that the seed would not grown, you substituted another seed for the one I gave you. Ling was the only one with the courage and honesty to bring me a pot with my seed in it. Therefore, he is the one who will be the new emperor!”

Author unknown

One night a group of nomads were preparing to retire for the evening, when suddenly they were surrounded by a great light.

They knew they were in the presence of a celestial being.

With great anticipation, they awaited a heavenly message of great importance that they knew must be especially for them.

Finally, the voice spoke.

“Gather as many pebbles as you can. Put them in your saddle bags. Travel a day’s journey. Tomorrow night you will be both glad and sad.”

Afterwards, the nomads shared their disappointment and anger with each other. They had expected the revelation of a great universal truth that would enable them to create wealth, health and purpose for the world. But instead they were given a menial task that made no sense to them at all.

However, the memory of the brilliance of their visitor caused each one to pick up a few pebbles and deposit them in their saddle bags while voicing their displeasure.

They traveled a day’s journey. That night, while making camp, they reached into their saddle bags and discovered that the pebbles they had gathered the night before had turned into beautiful and brilliant diamonds!

Indeed, they were both glad and sad, just as the voice had promised.

They were glad they now had beautiful and valuable diamonds. They were sad they had not gathered more pebbles when they had the opportunity.

And the moral here is, take what you can every day and be as hardworking and positive about it all. You never know where or when you will reap the benefits, or how great those benefits will be. Don’t regret not taking more later down the road.

By: John Wayne Schlatter

A little girl walked daily to and from school. Though the weather that morning was questionable and clouds were forming, she made her daily trip to school. As the afternoon progressed, the winds whipped up, along with thunder and lightning.

The mother of the little girl felt concerned that her daughter would be frightened as she walked home from school, and she herself feared that the electrical storm might harm her child.

Following the roar of thunder, lightning, through the sky and full of concern, the mother quickly got in her car and drove along the route to her child’s school.

As she did so, she saw her little girl walking along, but at each flash of lightning, the child would stop, look up and smile. Another and another were to follow quickly, each with the little girl stopping, looking up and smiling.

Finally, the mother called over to her child and asked, “What are you doing?”

The child answered, smiling, “God just keeps taking pictures of me.”

Author Unknown

My tire had a staple in it. Of all times for this to happen
– a flat tire. But when is a good time for a flat tire? Not when you are wearing a suit and you have been traveling for nearly five hours, and adding to this bleak picture, nightfall is approaching. Wait, did I mention that I was on a country road? Okay, now you have the picture. There was only one thing to do: call for help. Yeah, right. The cell phone I bought for security and protection in moments like this isn’t in range to call anyone. “No Service” it says. No kidding! I sat for a few minutes moaning and complaining.

It’s a male thing. Then I began emptying my trunk so that I could get at the tire and tools needed to get the job done.
I carry a large plastic container filled with what I call “just-in-case-stuff.” When I am training or speaking, I love to have props with me. I hate leaving anything home so I bring everything …just in case. Cars buzz by me. A few beep sarcastically. I hear the horn saying “ha ha!” I say, “You’ll get yours!”

Darkness begins to settle in. It’s becoming a bit difficult to see. The tire is on the passenger side, thank God, away from all the traffic, but making it difficult to benefit from the headlights of passing cars. Suddenly a car pulls off the road behind me. In the blinding light I see a male figure approaching me.

“Hey, do you need any help?”

“Well, it certainly isn’t easy doing this with a white dress shirt and suit on,” I said.Then he steps into the light. I literally was frightened. This young guy was dressed in black. Nearly everything imaginable was pierced and tattooed. His hair was cropped and poorly cut. He had leather bracelets with spikes on each wrist.

“How about I give you a hand?” he said.

“Well, I don’t know . . . I think I can . . . ”

“Come on, it will only take me a few minutes.” He took right over. While watching him I happened to look back at his car and noticed for the first time someone sitting in the passenger seat. That concerned me. I suddenly felt outnumbered. Thoughts of car-jackings and robberies flashed through my mind. I really just wanted to get this over and survive it. Then, without warning, it began to pour. The night sky had hidden the approaching clouds. It hit like a waterfall and made it impossible to finish the tire change.

“Look, my friend, just stop what you’re doing. I appreciate all your help. You better get going. I’ll finish after the rain stops,” I said.

“Let me help you put your stuff back in the trunk. It will get ruined,” he insisted. “Then get in my car. We’ll wait with you,” he insisted.

“No, really. I’ll take care of everything,” I said.

“You can’t get in your car with the jack up like that. It will fall. Come on. Get in,” he said as he grabbed my arm and pulled me toward the car. Crack! Boom! Lightning and thunder roared like a freight train. I literally jumped in his car. “Oh, God, protect me!” I thought to myself. Wet and tired I settled into the back seat.

Suddenly a small frail voice came from the front seat of the car. “Are you all right?” she said as she turned around to face me.

“Yes, I am,” I replied with much relief seeing the old woman there. It must be his Mom.

“My name is Beatrice and this is my neighbor Jeff,” she said. “He insisted on stopping when he saw you struggling with the tire.”

“I am grateful for his help,” I said.

“Me, too!” she said with a laugh. “Jeff takes me to visit my husband. We had to place him in a nursing home and it’s about 30 minutes away from where we live. So, every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, we have a date.” She laughed and shook her head.

“We’re the remake of the Odd Couple,” Jeff said as he joined in laughing.”

“Jeff, that’s incredible what you do for her. I would never have guessed, well, ah, you know I . . .” I stumbled with the words.

“I know. People who look like me don’t do nice things,” he said. Silence. I really felt uncomfortable. I never believed that I judged people by the way they dressed. I was angry with myself for being so stupid.

“Jeff is a great kid. I’m not the only one he helps. He’s a volunteer at our church. He also works with the kids in the learning center at the low income housing unit in our town,”
said Beatrice.

“I’m a tutor” Jeff said quietly as he stared at my car.
Silence again played a part now in a moment of reflection rather than the uncomfortable feeling that I had insulted someone. He was right. What he wore on the outside was a reflection of the world as he saw it. What he wore on the inside was the spirit of giving, caring and loving the world he wanted to see. The rain stopped and Jeff and I changed the tire. I tried to offer him money and, of course, he refused it. As we shook hands I began to apologize for my stupidity.

He said, “I experience that same reaction often. I actually thought about changing the way I look. But then I saw this as an opportunity to make a point.”

Author unknown

Our house was directly across the street from the clinic entrance of Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. We lived downstairs and rented the upstairs rooms to out-patients at the clinic. One summer evening as I was fixing supper, there was a knock at the door. I opened it to see a truly awful looking man. “Why, he’s hardly taller than my eight-year- old,” I thought as I stared at the stooped, shriveled body.

But the appalling thing was his face-lopsided from swelling, red and raw.
Yet his voice was pleasant as he said, “Good evening. I’ve come to see if you’ve a room for just one night. I came for a treatment this morning from the eastern shore, and there’s no bus ’til morning.” He told me he’d been hunting for a room since noon but with no success, no one seemed to have a room. “I guess it’s my face…I know it looks terrible, but my doctor says with a few more treatments…”

For a moment I hesitated, but his next words convinced me:
“I could sleep in this rocking chair on the porch. My bus leaves early in the morning.” I told him we would find him a bed, but to rest on the porch. I went inside and finished getting supper. When we were ready, I asked the old man if he would join us. “No thank you. I have plenty.” And he held up a brown paper bag.

When I had finished the dishes, I went out on the porch to talk with him a few minutes. It didn’t take a long time to see that this old man had an oversized heart crowded into that tiny body. He told me he fished for a living to support his daughter, her five children, and her husband, who was hopelessly crippled from a back injury.

He didn’t tell it by way of complaint; in fact, every other sentence was preface with a thanks to God for a blessing. He was grateful that no pain accompanied his disease, which was apparently a form of skin cancer. He thanked God for giving him the strength to keep going. At bedtime, we put a camp cot in the children’s room for him. When I got up in the morning, the bed linens were neatly folded and the little man was out on the porch. He refused breakfast, but just before he left for his bus, haltingly, as if asking a great favor, he said, “Could I please come back and stay the next time I have a treatment? I won’t put you out a bit. I can sleep fine in a chair.” He paused a moment and then added, “Your children made me feel at home. Grownups are bothered by my face, but children don’t seem to mind.”

I told him he was welcome to come again. And on his next trip he arrived a little after seven in the morning. As a gift, he brought a big fish and a quart of the largest oysters I had ever seen. He said he had shucked them that morning before he left so that they’d be nice and fresh. I knew his bus left at 4:00 a.m. and I wondered what time he had to get up in order to do this for us.

In the years he came to stay overnight with us there was never a time that he did not bring us fish, or oysters, or vegetables from his garden. Other times we received packages in the mail, always by special delivery; fish and oysters packed in a box of fresh young spinach or kale, every leaf carefully washed. Knowing that he must walk three miles to mail these, and knowing how little money he had made the gifts doubly precious. When I received these little remembrances, I often thought of a comment our next-door neighbor made after he left that first morning. “Did you keep that awful looking man last night? I turned him away!

You can lose roomers by putting up such people!” Maybe we did lose roomers once or twice. But oh! If only they could have known him, perhaps their illness’ would have been easier to bear. I know our family always will be grateful to have known him; from him we learned what it was to accept the bad without complaint and the good with gratitude.

Author Unknown

A couple, whom we shall call John and Mary, had a nice home and two lovely children, a boy and a girl. John had a good job and had just been asked to go on a business trip to another city and would be gone for several days. It was decided that Mary needed an outing and would go along too.
They hired a reliable woman to care for the children and made the trip, returning home a little earlier than they had planned.

As they drove into their home town feeling glad to be back, they noticed smoke, and they went off their usual route to see what it was. They found a home in flames. Mary said, “Oh well it isn’t our fire, let’s go home.”

But John drove closer and exclaimed, “That home belongs to Fred Jones who works at the plant. He wouldn’t be off work yet, maybe there is something we could do.” “It has nothing to do with us.” Protested Mary. “You have your good clothes on lets not get any closer.”

But John drove up and stopped and they were both horror stricken to see the whole house in flames. A woman on the lawn was in hysterics screaming, “The children! Get the children!” John grabbed her by the shoulder saying, “Get a hold of yourself and tell us where the children are!” “In the basement,” sobbed the woman, “down the hall and to the left.”

In spite of Mary’s protests John grabbed the water hose and soaked his clothes, put his wet handkerchief on his head and bolted for the basement which was full of smoke and scorching hot. He found the door and grabbed two children, holding one under each arm like the football player he was.
As he left he could hear some more whimpering. He delivered the two badly frightened and nearly suffocated children into waiting arms and filled his lungs with fresh air and started back asking how many more children were down there. They told him two more and Mary grabbed his arm and screamed, “John! Don’t go back! It’s suicide! That house will cave in any second!”

But he shook her off and went back by feeling his way down the smoke filled hallway and into the room. It seemed an eternity before he found both children and started back.
They were all three coughing and he stooped low to get what available air he could. As he stumbled up the endless steps the thought went through his mind that there was something strangely familiar about the little bodies clinging to him, and at last when they came out into the sunlight and fresh air, he found that he had just rescued his own children.

The babysitter had left them at a friend’s home while she did some shopping.

Unknown Author

There was once a man and woman who had been married for more than 60 years. They had shared everything. They had talked about everything. They had kept no secrets from each other, except that the little old woman had a shoe box in the top of her closet that she had cautioned her husband never to open or ask her about. For all of these years, he had never thought about the box, but one day the little old woman got very sick and the doctor said she would not recover. In trying to sort out their affairs, the little old man took down the shoe box and took it to his wife’s bedside. She agreed that it was time that he should know what was in the box. When he opened it, he found two crocheted doilies and a stack of money totaling $25,000. He asked her about the contents…

“When we were to be married,” she said, “my grandmother told me the secret of a happy marriage was to never argue.

She told me that if I ever got angry with you, I should just keep quiet and crochet a doily.”

The little old man was so moved, he had to fight back tears.

Only two precious doilies were in the box. She had only been angry with him two times in all those years of living and loving. He almost burst with happiness.

“Honey,” he said, “that explains the doilies, but what about all of this money? Where did it come from?”

“Oh,” she said, “that’s the money I made from selling the doilies.”

There was once an 11 year old who went fishing every chance he got from the dock at his family’s cabin on an island in the middle of a New Hampshire lake. On the day before bass season opened, he and his father were fishing early in the evening, catching sunfish and perch with worms. Then he tied on a small silver lure and practiced casting. The lure struck the water and caused colored ripples in the sunset, then silver ripples as the moon rose over the lake.

When his pole doubled over, he knew something huge was on the other end. His father watched with admiration as the boy skillfully worked the fish alongside the dock. Finally he very gingerly lifted the exhausted fish from the water. It was the largest one he had ever seen, but it was a bass.

The boy and his father looked at the handsome fish, gills playing back and forth in the moonlight. The father lit a match and looked at his watch. It was 10 p.m. — two hours before the season opened. He looked at the fish, then at the boy. “You’ll have to put it back, son,” he said.

“Dad!” cried the boy. “There will be other fish,” said his father. “Not as big as this one,” cried the boy. He looked around the lake. No other fishermen or boats were anywhere around in the moonlight. He looked again at his father.

Even though no one had seen them, nor could anyone ever know what time he caught the fish, the body could tell by the clarity of his father’s voice

that the decision was not negotiable. He slowly worked the hook out of the lip of the huge bass, and lowered it into the black water.

The creature swished its powerful body and disappeared. The boy suspected that he would never again see such a great fish.

That was 34 years ago. Today the boy is a successful architect in New York City. His father’s cabin is still there on the lake. He takes his own son and daughters fishing from the same dock.

And he was right. He has never again caught such a magnificent fish as the one he landed that night long ago.

But he does see that same fish…again and again…every time he comes up against a question of ethics. For, as his father taught him, ethics are simple matters of right and wrong. It is only the practice of ethics that is difficult.

Do we do right when no one is looking? Do we refuse to cut corners to get the design in on time? Or refuse to trade stocks based on information that we know we aren’t supposed to have? We would if we were taught to put the fish back when we were young. For we would have learned the truth. The decision to do right lives fresh and fragrant in our memory. It is a story we will proudly tell our friends and grandchildren. Not about how we had a chance to beat the system and took it, but about how we did the right thing and were forever strengthened.

Author Unknown

For a long time, every Sunday in church the pastor would say keep Gloria Beck in your prayers. She was an older member of the church that was suffering from cancer. I got sort of use to hearing about her, and didn’t think about her to much.

Until one day, I was sitting by a friend in church, and she told me that she had went to see Gloria in the hospital. She wasn’t doing good at all and she had asked her to just hold her hand. I thought about Gloria all day, and I prayed for her that night. I thought of what I could tell her if I went to see her. She had been my computer teacher in grade school. I clearly remember her calm voice and gentle hands.

She was a great teacher.

I made it a promise to myself to go and see her. But then the week started and I got busy with school and practice.

Pretty soon I was back in church the next Sunday. Only this time the pastor said sorrowfully that Gloria Beck had died the day before. My heart sank. If only I would have spent 10 minutes of my day to tell her how much she meant to me, but it was to late now.

I learned a very valuable lesson that day. Never wait to thank. Please, take the time to thank the people who have made a difference in your life. No matter how small.

by unknown author

Once upon a time there was a wise man who used to go to the ocean to do his journal 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.’

There is something very special in each and every one of us.
We have all been gifted with the ability to make a difference. And if we can become aware of that gift, we gain, through the strength of our visions, the power to shape the future. We must each find our starfish. And if we throw our stars wisely and well, the world will be blessed.

Author Unknown