Stories Inspiring

The young people in one church had been studying the Book of Esther. It was obviously that one boy had been paying attention when his family had Brussels sprouts for supper. Spearing one and looking at it distastefully, he placed it in his mouth, saying, “If I perish, I perish.”

The story of Esther is one of the greatest stories of courage in the Bible.

When Mordecai realized that there was a plot to kill the Jews in Persia, he saw only one possibility to save them, and that was through Esther. He asked Esther to go before the king and request that he rescind the decree and save the Jewish people. But Esther was hesitant to do that because there was a law that said that anyone who went into the king’s court without an invitation could be put to death, and she hadn’t been invited for a month!

My Dad gave me a few of my Grandma’s old photo albums the other day. When I looked through them it was like taking a step back in time. It was so incredible to see my brothers, my Mom, my Dad, and my Grandma all looking so young. And on some pages I even saw a smiling six year old boy with my face staring up at me in sweet innocence.

I wondered what that boy would think if he could see what would happen to him during the next 40 years. He would have his home burn down in the middle of the night and lose everything he owned before he was 12. As a young man he would watch his Mom fight a losing battle with cancer and die far before her time. He would see his Grandma slowly lose her health and her memories to dementia before passing away as well.

I remember one night when I was taking care of a couple of our grandchildren. It was late in the evening, but since grandfathers usually let their grandchildren stay up longer than they should, they were still awake. 

We were laughing, messing around, and having a great time together when we suddenly heard a knock on the door. Not the doorbell, but a mysterious knocking. Immediately one of my grandsons grabbed hold of my arm. 

“It’s OK,” I said. The knock came again, and I started to the door. My grandson followed me, but he hung on to my left leg and hid behind me as I opened the door.

Unable to attend the funeral after his Uncle Charlie died, a man who lived far away called his brother and told him, “Do something nice for Uncle Charlie and send me the bill.”

Later, he got a bill for $200.00, which he paid. The next month, he got another bill for $200.00, which he also paid, figuring it was some incidental expense.

But, when the bills for $200.00 kept arriving every month, he finally called his brother again to find out what was going on.

Two friends went out to play golf and were about to tee off, when one noticed that his partner had only one golf ball. “Don’t you have at least one other ball in case yours gets lost?” he asked.

The man replied, “This is a very special golf ball. I won’t lose it so I don’t need another one.”

His friend looked skeptical. “Really? Well, what happens if you miss your shot and the ball goes in the lake?”

“That’s okay,” he replied, “this special golf ball floats. I’ll get it back.”

“Then what happens if you hit it into the trees and it gets lost among the bushes and shrubs?”

The other replied, “That’s okay too. You see, this special golf ball has a homing beacon. I’ll find it – no problem.”

“Okay. Let’s say our game goes late, the sun goes down, and you slice it off the fairway. What are you going to do then?”

“No problem, this ball is florescent. I’ll be able to see it in the dark.”

At a computer expo (COMDEX), Bill Gates reportedly compared the computer industry with the auto industry and stated, “If GM had kept up with technology like the computer industry has, we would all be driving $25.00 cars that got 1,000 miles to the gallon.”

In response to Bill’s comments, General Motors issued a press release stating: If GM had developed technology like Microsoft, we would all be driving cars with the following characteristics:

1. For no reason whatsoever, your car would crash twice a day.

2. Every time they repainted the lines in the road, you would have to buy a new car.

3. Occasionally your car would die on the freeway for no reason. You would have to pull to the side of the road, close all of the windows, shut off the car, restart it, and reopen the windows before you could continue. For some reason you would simply accept this.

4. Occasionally, executing a maneuver such as a left turn would cause your car to shut down and refuse to restart, in which case you would have to reinstall the engine.

5. Macintosh would make a car that was powered by the sun, was reliable, five times as fast and twice as easy to drive – but would run on only five percent of the roads.

Two men fell on hard times. Try as they might, they couldn’t find work. They heard that a museum was willing to pay $50 apiece for live rattlesnakes so, in desperation, they decided to catch snakes.

Outfitted with a net and basket, they hiked to a remote area renowned for its large snake population. But as they scaled a steep ledge, rock gave way and they tumbled down a slippery bank – into a deep pit crawling with rattlesnakes.

One of the men quickly sized up the situation and shouted to his friend, “Look! We’re rich! We’re rich!”

Okay, maybe he didn’t fully appreciate his predicament. But in most situations, I believe there is a sunny side. Take aging, for instance. As we grow older, our skin turns from satin to cotton to seersucker to corduroy. And though we might be encouraged that at least wrinkles don’t hurt, valuable experience, deep understanding and hard-won wisdom can also come with years of living. Some people are merely aging — others are “sageing.” The difference is in outlook.

The following article was in the news a few years ago: HANOI, Vietnam – After nearly two decades of ridicule, a father has agreed to change his son’s name from “Fined Six Thousand and Five Hundred” — the amount he was forced to pay in local currency for ignoring Vietnam’s

When I was about 13 and my brother 10, our father promised to take us to the circus. But then at lunchtime there was a phone call–some urgent business that required his attention downtown–and we braced ourselves for disappointment. But then we heard him say, “No, I won’t be able

Mind, body, spirit…. it’s all important. Healthy and whole people are interested in all three areas. But I suspect I too often take my body for granted. Oh, I eat pretty well and exercise when I can. But I’m sure I don’t pay enough attention to the physical.

I can relate to one man who complained about exercise. “It’s not that I am against it,” he said, “it’s just that when I look at my body, I feel it’s already been punished enough.” Even champion archer Rick McKinney – a superb athlete – confessed that he regularly ate chocolate chip cookies for breakfast. He once jokingly referred to “the basic four food groups” as a Big Mac, fries, a shake and a lemon tart.

Okay – I take a little better care of myself than that. But let me say something we all may need to hear: you have a GREAT body. Whether you look or feel all that well, your body is no less than phenomenal. Imagine — all of this will happen to you today: