Working To Impress

A retired friend became interested in the construction of an addition to a shopping mall. Observing the activity regularly, he was especially impressed by the conscientious operator of a large piece of equipment. The day finally came when my friend had a chance to tell this man how much he'd enjoyed watching his scrupulous work. Looking astonished, the operator replied, "You're not the supervisor?" 

 - Howard A. Stein in Reader's Digest

Too Busy To Play Until It's Too Late

My precious boy with the golden hair 

Came up one day beside my chair

And fell upon his bended knee

And said, "Oh, Mommy, please play with me!"

I said, "Not now, go on and play;

I've got so much to do today."

He smiled through tears in eyes so blue

When I said, "We'll play when I get through."

But the chores lasted all through the day

And I never did find time to play.

When supper was over and dishes done,

I was much too tired for my little son.

I tucked him in and kissed his cheek

And watched my angel fall asleep.

As I tossed and turned upon my bed,

Those words kept ringing in my head,

"Not now, son, go on and play,

I've got so much to do today."

I fell asleep and in a minute's span,

My little boy is a full-grown man.

No toys are there to clutter the floor;

No dirty fingerprints on the door;

No snacks to fix; no tears to dry;

The rooms just echo my lonely sigh.

And now I've got the time to play;

But my precious boy is gone away.

I awoke myself with a pitiful scream

And realized it was just a dream

For across the room in his little bed,

Lay my curly-haired boy, the sleepy-head.

My work will wait 'til another day

For now I must find some time to play. 

- Dianna (Ars. Joe) Neal

It's A Sad Way Down

Michael Donahue, founder of InterWorld Corporation in New York City, was elated when his company’s share price skyrocketed in a public stock offering in August 1999, earning him $448 million. So he splurged big-time.

He bought a $9.6 million second home in Palm Beach, spent $100,000 to help sponsor his polo team in Florida, and dropped a bundle renting a private jet so he could whisk off to Palm Beach on weekend jaunts with his wife. “It was a lifestyle thing,” he says.

Today Donahue is a member of another club — call it the 90 percent club — of executives whose companies’ stock prices have fallen that much or more from their peak. The value of Donahue’s InterWorld stake has plunged to $12.6 million; the share price falling 96.8 percent to $2.94 from a peak of $93.50 on December 31, 1999. Donahue was asked to repay part of a $14 million loan he took out with his InterWorld stock as collateral. And he had to put his Palm Beach house on the market for more than $13 million.

“Going up was easy,” Donahue says. “But when it starts going down, no one wants to talk to you. It’s been the most challenging personal experience of my career.”

 — Susan Pulliam and Scott Thurm, 
“Echelon of Ex-centimillionaires Sees Stakes 
Plunge as Net Craze Fades,” Wall Street Journal (October 20, 2000)

Eternal Lessons From Dad

Here are two of the most important things Michael Tait of dc Talk learned from his dad:

• Love people. “That’s what he taught,” says Tait says, “and that’s what he did. He cried with people, he laughed with people. Everybody was his friend. He couldn’t care less about your race, your nationality, your socioeconomic status, whatever. All he cared about was you, your soul.”

• Live for God. Tait sums up the lesson this way: “Don’t get caught up in the things of this world, because they’re just fleeting. The world will get the best of you if you let it, so live for God.”

Tait was visiting his parents in Washington, D.C., during the Christmas holidays in 1997 when his dad complained of stomach pains. Michael took him to the hospital, where doctors found cancer. Michael was present a few weeks later when his dad breathed his last. “The man was my hero,” Tait said.

 — Mark Moring, “My Dad, My Hero,” 
Campus Life (May – June 1999)

For All That He Has Done, I Choose To Give Him My Love

While helping her mother prepare for Christmas, a little girl asked about the meaning of this holiday.  The mother told her that Christmas was the time of the year we celebrate the birthday of Jesus, God's Son.  The little girl asked her mother why Jesus didn't get the presents if it was his birthday.  The mother explained the tradition of gift exchange as a way of showing love for one another and the matter was dropped at that.

On the evening before Christmas the little girl brought a gift-wrapped package from her room and placed it under the tree.  "What's in the box?" her mother asked.

"A gift for Jesus.  I am leaving it under the tree so he can open it tonight while I am asleep."

The mother did not want her daughter to be disappointed, so during the night she opened the package.  But there was nothing in it.  The next morning her daughter raced into the living room to see if her package had been opened.  It had!  She shouted to her mother, "Jesus opened his present last night!"

The mystified mother walked over to her daughter and asked what she had given Jesus.

The little girl explained, "I figure that Jesus has about everything he needs, and I can't give him much cuz I'm just a little girl.  But there is one thing I can give him.  So I decided to give him a BOX OF LOVE."

- submitted by Fred Lowery, The Pastor's Story File (December 1993)

It's Your Turn To Give

A mother was sick and tired of hearing her children always telling her what they wanted Santa to bring them.  On one such occasion she reminded them that Christmas is a time of giving and not receiving.

The children could tell that Mom really believed what sounded like absolute nonsense to them.  They secretly met and tried to figure out what was going through their mother's head.  They finally came to a conclusion as to what must be done.

They went to their mother in a very concerned manner.  The oldest child acted as the spokesperson: "Mom, we've been thinking about what you told us about how important it is to give at Christmas; with all of our talk about Santa, you must have felt left out.  We don't want you to feel this way, Mom.  So I'll tell you what we have decided to do.  Santa doesn't have to get us all the presents; if you want to get us some, too, we're going to let you!"

- Michael Hodgin, Parables, Etc. (December 1993)

Christmas Peace

Eighty years ago, on the first Christmas Day of World War I, British and German troops put down their guns and celebrated peacefully together in the no-man's land between the trenches.

The war, briefly, came to a halt.

In some places, festivities began when German troops lit candles on Christmas trees on their parapets so the British sentries a few hundred yards away could see them.

Elsewhere, the British acted first, starting bonfires and letting off rockets.

Pvt. Oswald Tilley of the London Rifle Brigade wrote to his parents: "Just you think that while you were eating your turkey, etc., I was out talking and shaking hands with the very men I had been trying to kill a few hours before!  It was astounding."

All along the line that Christmas Day, soldiers found their enemies were much like them and began asking why they should be trying to kill each other.

The generals were shocked.  High Command diaries and statements express anxiety that if that sort of  thing spread it could sap troops' will to fight.

Th soldiers in khaki and gray sang carols to each other, exchanged gifts of tobacco,  jam, sausage, chocolate and liquor, traded names and addresses and played soccer between the shell holes and barbed wire.  They even paid mutual trench visits.

This day is called "the most famous truce in military history" by British television producer Malcolm Brown and researcher Shirley Seaton in their book "Christmas Truce," published in 1984.

- "Enemies Kept Christmas Truce in Trenches 80 Years Ago," in the Elizabethton Star (December 25, 1994)