Priorities, Priority

Olympic Games

One of the most powerful stories in the history of the Olympic Games involved a canoeing specialist named Bill Havens. He was a shoe-in, I’m told, to win a gold medal in the 1924 Olympic Games in Paris. But a few months before the Games were held, he learned that his wife would likely give birth to their first child while he was away. She told him that she could make it on her own, but this was a milestone Bill just didn’t want to miss. So he surprised everyone and stayed home. Bill greeted his infant son, Frank, into the world on August 1, 1924. Though he always wondered what might have been, he said he never regretted his decision.

Well, he poured his life into that little lad and shared with him a love for the rapids. Twenty-four years passed, and the Olympic Games were held in Helsinki, Finland. This time Frank Havens was chosen to compete in the canoeing event. The day after the competition, Bill received a telegram from his son that read:

“Dear Dad, Thanks for waiting around for me to be born in 1924. I’m coming home with the gold medal that you should have won.” It was signed, “Your loving son, Frank.”

Many would question Bill Haven’s decision to miss his big opportunity in Paris, but he never wavered. He wanted his family to know that they always came first, no matter what. And that made him a hero to a little boy named Frank.

Dr. James Dobson, Coming Home, Timeless Wisdom for Families, (Tyndale House Publishers, Wheaton; 1998), pp. 140-141

Priorities in Prayer

Andrew Bonar (great man of prayer) had three rules:

1. Not to speak to any man before speaking to Jesus;

2. Not to do anything with his hands until he had been on his knees;

3. Not to read the papers until he had read his Bible.

Keith L. Brooks, Essential Themes, (Moody Press, Chicago; 1974), p. 6

Money Priorities

The percentage of adults who say they would spend money on this first if they suddenly became wealthy:

House	31
Education for kids/self	30
Vacation	10
Car	9
Help for kids/family	3
Charity	2
Household help	2
Pay off debt	2
Boat	2
Investments	1
Clothes/jewelry	1
Others	7

USA Today (3/13-15/98), research by Yankelovich Partners, for Lutheran Brotherhood

Cat’s in the Cradle

Many of you may recall the popular song “Cat’s in the Cradle” sung by Harry Chapin. The words always bring a tear to my eye because I am a father, and over the years I have had to travel so much. The song unfolds as follows:

My child arrived just the other day;
He came to the world in the usual way,
But there were planes to catch, and bills to pay,
He learned to walk while I was away.

And he was talkin’ ‘fore I knew it and as he grew,
He’d say, “I’m gonna be like you, Dad.
You know I’m gonna be like you.”
And the cat’s in the cradle and the silver spoon,
Little Boy Blue and the man in the moon.

“When you comin’ home, Dad?”
“I don’t know when, but we’ll get together then;
You know we’ll have a good time then.”

My son turned ten just the other day.
He said, “Thanks for the ball, Dad, come on, let’s play.
Can you teach me to throw?”
I said, “No, not today,
I got a lot to do.”

He said, “That’s okay.”
And he walked away but his smile never dimmed.
It said, “I’m gonna be like him, yeah,
You know I’m gonna be like him….”

And he came from college just the other day;
So much like a man I just had to say,
“Son, I’m proud of you, can you sit for a while?”
He shook his head and he said with a smile,
“What I’d really like, Dad, is to borrow the car keys.
See you later, can I have them please?”

I’ve long since retired, my son’s moved away.
I called him up just the other day.
I said, “I’d like to see you, if you don’t mind.”
He said, “I’d love to, Dad, if I can find the time.
You see, my new job’s a hassle, and the kids have the flu,
But it’s sure nice talkin’ to you, Dad,
It’s been nice talkin’ to you.”

And as I hung up the phone
It occurred to me,
He’d grown up just like me.
My boy was just like me.

And the cat’s in the cradle and the silver spoon,
Little Boy Blue and the man in the moon,
“When you comin’ home, Son?”
“I don’t know when, but we’ll get together then, Dad.
We’re gonna have a good time then.”

The melodrama of this song was played out in Chapin’s own life almost like a self-fulfilling prophecy. I have been told that his wife, who wrote the words of the song, asked him one day when he was going to slow down the torrid pace of his life and give some time to their children. His answer was, “At the end of this busy summer, I’ll take some time to be with them.” That summer, ironically and tragically, Harry Chapin was killed in a car accident.

It is not possible to read that postscript of Chapin’s death and miss the larger point—that something was known, believed, and even “preached,” but never lived. When we chase manmade crowns and sacrifice the treasured relationships for which God has made us, life loses its meaning.

Ravi Zacharias, Can Man Live Without God, (Word Publ., Dallas: 1994), pp. 108-109

Russian Novelist

Clifton Fadiman, in The Little, Brown Book of Anecdotes, tells a story about Vladimir Nabokov, the Russian-born novelist who achieved popular success with his novels Lolita (1955), Pale Fire (1962) and Ada (1969).

One summer in the 1940s, Nabokov and his family stayed with James Laughlin at Alta, Utah, where Nabokov took the opportunity to enlarge his collection of butterflies and moths. Fadiman relates:

“Nabokov’s fiction has never been praised for its compassion; he was single-minded if nothing else. One evening at dusk he returned from his day’s excursion saying that during hot pursuit near Bear Gulch he had heard someone groaning most piteously down by the stream.

“‘Did you stop?’ Laughlin asked him.

“‘No, I had to get the butterfly.’

“The next day the corpse of an aged prospector was discovered in what has been renamed, in Nabokov’s honor, Dead Man’s Gulch.”

While people around us are dying, how often we chase butterflies!

Vernon Grounds, Denver, Colorado, quoted in Leadership, Summer Quarter, p. 39

Distracted Pilot

On paper, Michael Hillis was a sound enough pilot. When things went wrong, though, the 29-year-old captain tensed up. For that reason, Hillis had been asked to leave Cincinnati-based Comair, but he caught on quickly with American Eagle, and was at the controls of Flight 3379 as it descended toward the airport in Raleigh, N.C. At exactly 30 seconds after 6:33 p.m., two minutes and 4 miles from the airport, a panel light in the cockpit lit up. Hillis and his copilot, Matthew Sailor, had been trained to recognize the light as a signal that an engine had quit. Quickly, they set about determining which one. In doing so, however, they forgot about flying the plane. At 1,400 feet, the Jetstream 32 began to drop fast. Hillis and Sailor reacted immediately. It was too late. The plane smashed into the woods, and 15 of the 20 people aboard died, including Hillis and Sailor. Investigators pawing through the rubble came to a surprising conclusion: Neither of the plane’s engines had failed at all. Most likely, the light was faulty.

U.S. News & World Report, June 26, 1995, p. 29

NCAA Basketball Coach

The magazine article summarized the life of a former winning NCAA basketball coach and network sports announcer. Throughout his colorful coaching career he had been obsessed with the game and with winning. But years later, stricken with cancer, he came to realize the triviality of the goods and values to which he had been passionately devoted. “You get sick and you say to yourself, ‘Sports means nothing,’ and that feels terrible.”

Because he had spent little time with his wife and children, he confessed, “I figured I’d have 20 years in the big time, who knows, maybe win three national titles, then pack it in at 53 or 54….I was going to make it all up to them, all the time I’d been away….It sounds so silly now….But it went on and on, that insatiable desire to conquer the world.”

VCG, Our Daily Bread, October 17, 1997

Invitation Declined

Several years ago I was invited to the White House to meet with a few key religious leaders and the President of the United States. NOW that was a pretty good offer, wasn’t it? It was the first invitation from a president this old country boy from Mississippi had ever received. I’d been out of town during the first part of the week and between flights I called home to check in. When I did, I learned that my son Ben’s basketball game originally scheduled for mid-week had been re-scheduled for the end of the week—and I’d missed one game already!

The question was one of simple priority: “What’s the most important thing to me?” Since the government had been running pretty well without me for a number of years, I called the White House and said, “Ed Young won’t be coming.” (They recovered from this news beautifully.) Instead I went to the game and had the fun of seeing my son shoot the winning basket. I have to confess that deciding between the White House and the school gym was not too tough. My wife and my boys are my highest priority.

From Bad Beginnings to Happy Endings, by Ed Young (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publ., 1994), p. 29.

Quality Quotients

Americans were asked how close they are to meeting their ideal goals; analysts at KRC Research used the answers to develop measures of happiness they call “quality quotients.” Answers above 8 indicate general happiness; those below 7 denote relative unhappiness.

Percent Who Rank Issue One Of the Top Three Priorities in Life

Issue	Quotient	Quality
1. Family life	68%	8.18
2. Spiritual life	46%	8.25
3. Health	44%	7.68
4. Financial situation	25%	5.98
5. Their jobs	23%	6.82
6. Romantic life	18%	7.71
7. Leisure Time	14%	6.14
8. Their homes	11%	8.12

U.S. News & World Report(12/11/95), quoted in Preaching Resources, Spring, 1996.

Football Coach

In recent years a head coach divorced his wife of 26 years when he left coaching a college team to become head coach in the National Football League. He said he needed a wife while coaching on the college level for social functions and to show families that he would be looking out for their sons. In pro football, however, she was an unnecessary accouterment and a distraction to winning. He said winning football was his number one priority and his two sons second. How tragic!

In contract to this, Tom Landry, former coach of the Dallas cowboys said, “The thrill of knowing Jesus is the greatest thing that ever happened to me … I think God has put me in a very special place, and He expects me to use it to His glory in everything I do … whether coaching football or talking to the press, I’m always a Christian … Christ is first, family second and football third.”

Source unknown

The Hunters

A group of friends went deer hunting and paired off in twos for the day. That night one of the hunters returned alone, staggering under an eight-point buck.

“Where’s Harry?” he was asked.

“Harry had a stroke of some kind. He’s a couple of miles back up the trail.”

“You left Harry laying there, and carried the deer back?”

“Well,” said the hunter, “I figured no one was going to steal Harry.”

Bits & Pieces, March 3, 1994, p. 5

Paddleboat Race

Clovis Chappell, a minister from a century back, used to tell the story of two paddleboats. They left Memphis about the same time, traveling down the Mississippi River to New Orleans. As they traveled side by side, sailors from one vessel made a few remarks about the snail’s pace of the other.

Words were exchanged. Challenges were made. And the race began. Competition became vicious as the two boats roared through the Deep South.

One boat began falling behind. Not enough fuel. There had been plenty of coal for the trip, but not enough for a race. As the boat dropped back, an enterprising young sailor took some of the ship’s cargo and tossed it into the ovens. When the sailors saw that the supplies burned as well as the coal, they fueled their boat with the material they had been assigned to transport. They ended up winning the race, but burned their cargo.

God has entrusted cargo to us, too: children, spouses, friends. Our job is to do our part in seeing that this cargo reaches its destination.

Yet when the program takes priority over people, people often suffer.

How much cargo do we sacrifice in order to achieve the number one slot? How many people never reach the destination because of the aggressiveness of a competitive captain?

In the Eye of the Storm by Max Lucado, Word Publishing, 1991, pp. 97-98

Work or Wife?

Elsa no longer remembers what the argument was about, but it began before breakfast one morning and continued as Steve started off to work. “How can you just go off like that?” cried Elsa. “We haven’t settled a thing!”

Then Steve did what few men as ambitious and driven as Steve is could do: he turned around and went to the phone and canceled all his appointments for that day, “saying to me, in effect, that our relationship meant more than business meetings, saying that I’d married a man who would sacrifice work for love.”

Reader’s Digest, August, 1982

The Fire

Soon after Angi and David’s sixth anniversary, the couple’s home burned to the ground. Angi’s first act, when they were allowed to hunt through the blackened remains, was to search for their photo albums. When she went to tell David that the pictures had indeed survived, she found him carefully placing in a box some charred, folded pieces of paper—their courtship love letters.

“As I watched David kneeling there in the ashes,” she says, “I was overcome with the certainty that we were meant for each other. There, in the face of our greatest tragedy, our first thoughts were not of our material loss but of the potential loss of these precious parts of our life together. As I knelt to help him with the letters, I was certain that we hadn’t lost anything that mattered after all.”

Reader’s Digest, August, 1982

Putting First Things First

Haddon Robinson points out that one old recipe for rabbit started out with this injunction: “First catch the rabbit.” Says Robinson: “The writer knew how to put first things first. That’s what we do when we establish priorities—we put the things that should be in first place in their proper order.

Haddon Robinson, source unknown

Milan Cathedral

Over the triple doorways of the cathedral of Milan there are three inscriptions spanning the splendid arches.

• Over one is carved a beautiful wreath of roses, and underneath it is the legend, “All that which pleases is but for a moment.”
• Over the other is sculptured a cross, and there are the words, “All that which troubles us is but for a moment.”
• But underneath the great central entrance to the main aisle is the inscription, “That only is important which is eternal.”

If we always realize these three truths, we will not let trifles trouble us, not be interested so much in the passing pleasures of the hour. We should live for the permanent and the eternal.

Source unknown

Partially Finished Painting

In Berlin art gallery is a painting by German painter Adolf Menzel (1815-1905). Only partially finished. Intended to show Fredrick the Great speaking with some of his generals. Menzel painted generals and background, left king until last. He put the outline of Fredrick in charcoal, but died prior to finishing.

Many Christians come to end of life without ever having put Christ into his proper place, center stage.

Marching Orders, Karl Laney, p. 45

William Carey

That great missionary to India, William Carey, became deeply concerned about the attitude of his son Felix. The young man, a professing Christian, had promised to become a missionary. But he broke his vow when he was appointed ambassador to Burma. Carey requested prayer for him: “Pray for Felix. He has degenerated into an ambassador of the British government when he should be serving the King of kings.”

Our Daily Bread, February 2

Jimmy Johnson, Dallas Cowboy Coach

Jimmy Johnson, when coaching on the college level, had a wife and the appearance of a marriage because it was expected of college football coaches. The wife and family was needed for social occasions. The day he was named head coach of the Dallas Cowboys, he set about to rid himself of this excess baggage. He threw her away like yesterday’s newspaper. He didn’t need her any more and he didn’t lose any time in losing her. He confessed that he never bought his boys birthday or Christmas presents. He just didn’t have the time, and they weren’t a priority. So he single-mindedly threw himself into his football team, and in January, 1993, he made it to the top, #1, they won the Super Bowl.

So what’s he going to do next year, and the year after that, and …(In 1995 he was sacked, lost his job as head coach of the Dallas Cowboys. The last I heard, he’s being considered as a TV football commentator. The question he’ll have to answer every day of the rest of his life is this, was it worth it?)

Source unknown

Faithful Servant

Milt Rood worked for years and years in Spokane as a car salesman. He was also very active with the Union Gospel Mission work with juvenile delinquents. Week by week he’d patiently teach the Word and pray with young boys in trouble. One week Milt went into the Hospital for exploratory surgery. The doctors found he was full of cancer. They sewed him up again and sent him home. He died within a week. After the funeral, Ron Kinley remarked, “It’s interesting that at the funeral no one ever asked how many cars he had sold!”

John Underhill, Spokane, WA

Husband’s Funeral

Surprised to see an empty seat at the Super Bowl stadium, a diehard fan remarked about it to a woman sitting nearby. “It was my husband’s,” the woman explained, “But he died.” “I’m very sorry,” said the man. “Yet I’m really surprised that another relative, or friend, didn’t jump at the chance to take the seat reserved for him.”

“Beats me,” she said. “They all insisted on going to the funeral.”

Coffee Break

Typical Life Span

Someone has calculated how a typical life span of 70 years is spent. Here is the estimate:

	Sleep	23 years.	32.9%
	Work	16 years	22.8%
	TV	8 years	11.4%
	Eating	6 years	8.6%
	Travel	6 years	8.6%
	Leisure	4.5 years.	6.5%
	Illness	4 years	5.7%
	Dressing	2 years	2.8%
	Religion.	0.5 years	0.7%
	Total	70 years	100%

Our Daily Bread, November 25, 1992

Harry Truman’s Letters

A few years ago, the Harry S. Truman Library in Independence, MO, made public 1,300 recently-discovered letters that the late President wrote to his wife, Bess, over the course of a half-century. Mr. Truman had a lifelong rule of writing to his wife every day they were apart. He followed this rule whenever he was away on official business or whenever Bess left Washington to visit her beloved Independence.

Scholars are examining the letters for any new light they may throw on political and diplomatic history. For our part, we were most impressed by the simple fact that every day he was away, the President of the United States took time out from his dealing with the world’s most powerful leaders to sit down and write a letter to his wife.

Bits & Pieces, October 15, 1992, pp. 15-16

Winston Churchill

One of history’s most cruel ironies is the fact that Sir Winston Churchill was able to save the Western world but was unable to find time for his own children. They turned to alcohol.

Source unknown

Robert Schuller

Recently Pastor Robert Schuller of Garden Grove, California, visited 14 cities in one week to promote one of his books. This in addition to other responsibilities which had to travel with him. Then his office advised that when he got home he was scheduled for a luncheon with the winner of a charity raffle. Raffle tickets had been auctioned off for a “lunch with Robert Schuller.” He hurried home, prepared to squeeze the luncheon into his crowded schedule, then learned that one person had bid $500 to have lunch with him. Dr. Schuller was suddenly sobered. He happened to know that $500 represented that individual’s entire savings. And the girl willing to bid her entire savings to have lunch with him was his own school-age daughter.

Paul Harvey, Signs of the Times, August 1987, p. 11

The Deer Hunters

A group of friends went deer hunting and paired off in two’s for the day. That night one of the hunters returned alone, staggering under an eight point buck.

“Where’s Harry?”

“Harry had a stroke of some kind. He’s a couple of miles back up the trail.”

“You left Harry laying there, and carried the deer back?”

“A tough call,” nodded the hunter, “but I figured no one is going to steal Harry.”

The Jokesmith, Christian Clippings, p. 27

The Lighthouse

A lighthouse along a bleak coast was tended by a keeper who was given enough oil for one month and told to keep the light burning every night. One day a woman asked for oil so that her children could stay warm. Then a farmer came. His son needed oil for a lamp so he could read. Still another needed some for an engine.

The keeper saw each as a worthy request and measured out just enough oil to satisfy all. Near the end of the month, the tank in the lighthouse ran dry. That night the beacon was dark and three ships crashed on the rocks. More than 100 lives were lost.

When a government official investigated, the man explained what he had done and why. “You were given one task alone,” insisted the official. “It was to keep the light burning. Everything else was secondary. There is no defense.”

Source unknown

Where Is Your Heart?

The body of David Livingstone was buried in England where he was born, but his heart was buried in the Africa he loved. At the foot of a tall tree in a small African village the natives dug a hole and placed in it the heart of this man who they loved and respected.

If your heart were to be buried in the place you loved most during life, where would it be? In your pocketbook? In an appropriate space down at the office? Where is your heart?

Source unknown

License Plates of 50 States

A number of years ago I spent a summer teaching in Mexico. Both my children went with me. To pass the time as we drove, my 3-year-old son Larry watched for license plates. The trip to Mexico netted him plates from 24 states, and while we were there he saw four more. So when we started back, he was over halfway to having “collected” all 50. Our return trip was during the peak vacation season, and to top it off, we went through Yellowstone National Park—a license-plate collector’s paradise. By the morning of the second day there, he had just one more state to go: Delaware. Larry became obsessed with finding a license plate from Delaware. When we stopped to see Yellowstone’s magnificent sights, he didn’t glance at them. He preferred to run up and down the parking lots, looking at license plates. Talk about stress! Talk about anxiety! You would have thought that his whole life depended on finding a Delaware license plate! When we stopped to eat in a cafeteria near Yellowstone Falls, my son begged me to let him look for license plates.

Please, I don’t want to eat,” Larry said. “Can’t I just stay here in the parking Lot?” “No,” we told him, “you have to eat.” So he went inside and ate as quickly as he could get the food down and then headed out to the parking lot. No sooner had we finished our meal, however, than Larry came bounding across the parking lot. “Come here! You’ve got to see it! You won’t believe it if you don’t see it!”

All of us went running out—and there, just pulling out of a parking space, was a blue Volkswagen bus with Delaware license plates. In fact, we got a picture, and even today, a decade later, when we look at our Yellowstone pictures, that’s the picture that tells more about what we did in Yellowstone than anything else.

Signs of the Times, August, 1992, p. 12

The Price of Excellence

Tom Peters is the co-author of two of the most widely-read books on the subject of work in the twentieth century. His second book, A Passion for Excellence, sets forth the mandates for excellence in the work arena. He’s emphatic about the need for prioritizing the customer, backing up your product with thorough service, and working from the strength of integrity.

He draws his discussion of excellence to a conclusion by talking about its cost. An honest but alarming statement appears in the last page of the last chapter of the book.

We are frequently asked if it is possible to “have it all”—a full and satisfying personal life and a full and satisfying, hard-working professional one. Our answer is: No. The price of excellence is time, energy, attention and focus, at the very same time that energy, attention and focus could have gone toward enjoying your daughter’s soccer game. Excellence is a high-cost item.

Source Unknown

Promotion

As David Ogilvy observed in Confessions of an Advertising Man: “If you prefer to spend all your spare time growing roses or playing with your children, I like you better, but do not complain that you are not being promoted fast enough.”

Little House on the Freeway, Tim Kimmel, p. 187

Planned Neglect

In her book A Practical Guide to Prayer, Dorothy Haskins tells about a noted concert violinist who was asked the secret of her mastery of the instrument. The woman answered the question with two words: “Planned neglect.” Then she explained. “There were many things that used to demand my time. When I went to my room after breakfast, I made my bed, straightened the room, dusted, and did whatever seemed necessary. When I finished my work, I turned to my violin practice. That system prevented me from accomplishing what I should on the violin. So I reversed things. I deliberately planned to neglect everything else until my practice period was complete. And that program of planned neglect is the secret of my success.”

Our Daily Bread, April 22

Swan And A Crane

There is an old legend of a swan and a crane. A beautiful swan alighted by the banks of the water in which a crane was wading about seeking snails. For a few moments the crane viewed the swan in stupid wonder and then inquired:

“Where do you come from?”

“I come from heaven!” replied the swan.

“And where is heaven?” asked the crane.

“Heaven!” said the swan, “Heaven! have you never heard of heaven?” And the beautiful bird went on to describe the grandeur of the Eternal City. She told of streets of gold, and the gates and walls made of precious stones; of the river of life, pure as crystal, upon whose banks is the tree whose leaves shall be for the healing of the nations. In eloquent terms the swan sought to describe the hosts who live in the other world, but without arousing the slightest interest on the part of the crane.

Finally the crane asked: “Are there any snails there?”

“Snails!” repeated the swan; “No! Of course there are not.”

“Then,” said the crane, as it continued its search along the slimy banks of the pool, “you can have your heaven. I want snails!”

This fable has a deep truth underlying it. How many a young person to whom God has granted the advantages of a Christian home, has turned his back upon it and searched for snails! How many a man will sacrifice his wife, his family, his all, for the snails of sin! How many a girl has deliberately turned from the love of parents and home to learn too late that heaven has been forfeited for snails! Moody’s Anecdotes, pp. 125-126

Source Unknown

50 Years From Now It Won’t Matter

During the early days of the Salvation Army, William Booth and his associates were bitterly attacked in the press by religious leaders and government leaders alike. Whenever his son, Bramwell, showed Booth a newspaper attack, the General would reply, “Bramwell, fifty years hence it will matter very little indeed how these people treated us; it will matter a great deal how we dealt with the work of God.”

The Wycliffe Handbook of Preaching & Preachers, W. Wiersbe, p. 185

Moody Concentrated On Evangelism

It was in 1873, in Dublin that D. L. Moody heard British evangelist Henry Varley utter those life changing words: “The world has yet to see what God can do with and for and through and in a man who is fully and wholly consecrated to Him.” It was after an all-night prayer meeting in Dublin, at the home of Henry Bewley. Varley did not even remember making the statement when Moody reminded him of it a year later. “As I crossed the wide Atlantic,” Moody said, “the boards of the deck…were engraved with them, and when I reached Chicago, the very paving stones seemed marked with them.” The result: Moody decided he was involved in too many ministries to be effective and therefore began to concentrate on evangelism.

The Wycliffe Handbook of Preaching & Preachers, W. Wiersbe, p. 200

Haste Make Waste

A weakness of all human beings, “ Henry Ford said, “is trying to do too many things at once. That scatters effort and destroys direction. It makes for haste, and haste makes waste. So we do things all the wrong ways possible before we come to the right one. Then we think it is the best way because it works, and it was the only way left that we could see. Every now and then I wake up in the morning headed toward that finality, with a dozen things I want to do. I know I can’t do them all at once.” When asked what he did about that, Ford replied, “I go out and trot around the house. While I’m running off the excess energy that wants to do too much, my mind clears and I see what can be done and should be done first.”

Bits and Pieces, September 19, 1991, p. 18

Resource

• C. Swindoll, Living Above the Level of Mediocrity, p. 59

.

Quotes

• Taking first things first often reduces the most complex human problem to a manageable proportion. - Dwight Eisenhower
• We cannot decide whether or not we will live or die; we can only decide what we will die for. - Bob Pierce
• The last thing one knows is what to put first. - Pascal

Sources unknown

Grasping for a Bag of Pearls

In his book Feminine Faces, Clovis Chappel wrote that when the Roman city of Pompeii was being excavated, the body of a woman was found mummified by the volcanic ashes of Mount Vesuvius. Her position told a tragic story. Her feet pointed toward the city gate, but her outstretched arms and fingers were straining for something that lay behind her. The treasure for which she was grasping was a bag of pearls. Chappel said, “Though death was hard at her heels, and life was beckoning to her beyond the city gates, she could not shake off their spell…But it was not the eruption of Vesuvius that made her love pearls more than life. It only froze her in this attitude of greed.”

Source Unknown

What I Believe In

The founder of McDonald’s, Ray Krock, was asked by a reporter what he believed in. “I believe in God, my family and McDonald’s,” he said. Then he added, “When I get to the office, I reverse the order.

Source Unknown

George Mueller Read The Bible 100 Times

Is reading the Bible a necessary part of your day or does it have a low priority in your life? George Mueller, after having read the Bible through one hundred times with increasing delight, made this statement: “I look upon it as a lost day when I have not had a good time over the Word of God. Friends often say, ‘I have so much to do, so many people to see, I cannot find time for Scripture study.’ Perhaps there are not many who have more to do than I.

For more than half a century I have never known one day when I had not more business than I could get through. For 4 years I have had annually about 30,000 letters, and most of these have passed through my own hands.

“Then, as pastor of a church with 1,200 believers, great has been by care. Besides, I have had charge of five immense orphanages; also, at my publishing depot, the printing and circulating of millions of tracts, books, and Bibles; but I have always made it a rule never to begin work until I have had a good season with God and His Word. The blessing I have received has been wonderful.”

Counter Attack, Jay Carty, Multnomah Press, 1988, pp. 155ff

List Your Priorities

A number of years ago a fascinating interview took place between Mr. Charles Schwab, then president of Bethlehem Steel, and Ivy Lee, a self-styled management consultant. Lee was an aggressive, self-confident man who by his perseverance had secured the interview with Mr. Schwab, who was no less self-assured, being one of the most powerful men in the world. During the conversation, Mr. Lee asserted that if the management of Bethlehem Steel would follow his advice, the company’s operations would be improved and their profits increased. Schwab responded, “If you can show us a way to get more things done, I’ll be glad to listen; and if it works, I’ll pay you whatever you ask within reason.” Lee handed Schwab a blank piece of paper and said, “Write down the most important things you have to do tomorrow.” Mr. Schwab did so. “Now, “ Lee continued, “Number them in order of importance.” Schwab did so. “Tomorrow morning start on number one, and stay with it until you have completed it. Then go on to number two and number three and number four…Don’t worry if you haven’t completed everything by the end of the day. At least you will have completed the most important projects. Do this every day. After you have been convinced of the value of this system, have your men try it. Try it as long as you like, and then send me your check for whatever you think the advice is worth.” The two men shook hands and Lee left the president’s office. A few weeks later Charles Schwab sent Ivy Lee a check for $25,000—an astronomical amount in the 1930s! He said it was the most profitable lesson he had learned in his long business career.

Liberating Ministry From The Success Syndrome, K Hughes, Tyndale, 1988, p. 54

Money Went Down With The Titanic

It was reported that eleven millionaires went down on the Titanic. Major A. H. Peuchen left $300,000 in money, jewelry, and securities in a box in his cabin. “The money seemed a mockery at that time,” he later said. “I picked up three oranges instead.”

Resource, July/August, 1990

Inscription

Fans of the American Wild West will find in a Deadwood, South Dakota, museum this inscription left by a beleaguered prospector: “I lost my gun. I lost my horse. I am out of food. The Indians are after me. But I’ve got all the gold I can carry!”

Today in the Word, March 1989, p. 34.

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