Be Like A Bee
The honeybee has one of the most highly developed social structures in the animal kingdom. At the heart of the hive, which may house as many as 80,000 bees, is the queen. Without her, the colony has no future. But the 80,000 don't just sit around watching their queen. Each bee has a specialized duty to fulfill.
56,000 Hours
By age 50, a person who has worked fulltime since college will have put in about 56,000 hours of work. Whether you're teaching school, working as a nurse, running a press, or whatever else you do, that's a lot of time.
The Time To Obey Is Now
Most parents are familiar with the words: "I'll do it in a minute, but first . . ." Our heavenly Father often receives a similar response from His children.
$7.23 Plus Pride
As I was studying the Old Testament law about making restitution for theft and property loss, I began to wonder how it applied to me. Immediately the words Bill's pump came to mind. Months before, I had borrowed my neighbor's pump to inflate a bicycle tire. It broke while I was using it. But I'm ashamed to admit that I returned it without saying anything to him.
Called Alongside
A few years ago, a 42-foot sailboat got caught in stormy seas off the east coast of the United States. Waves rose higher and higher until a giant wave flipped the boat upside down. The heavy keel righted the craft, but damage was significant.
The Best Policy
A construction worker walked into a fast-food restaurant and ordered two dinners to go. When his number was called, he picked up the bag, paid the cashier, and left.
Invisible Gold
In the 1980s, Northern Nevada was the site of a gold strike. The discovery would have been beyond the imagination of 19th-century prospectors, for the gold in those western hills is virtually invisible. Even after being magnified 1,500 times, most of the particles remain imperceptible.
Hypocrites
Speechwriter Peggy Noonan, in her book Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness, noted that appearances can be deceiving. "People never look like what they are," Noonan wrote. Of one unscrupulous businessman she commented that if we could see him as he really is, "He'd be sitting there at the dinner party with a dagger in his teeth." To all outward appearances he was an upstanding citizen, yet he was a hypocrite to the core.
Words Of Life
Not long ago, a friend wrote a lengthy account of his summers working at a mountain resort during his college years. Since I had worked there too, his stories of people, places, and events brought a flood of wonderful memories. It wasn't until I reached the end of his account that I realized something striking about what he had written. I thumbed back through the pages and began counting people. In all, he mentioned about fifty of his co-workers by name and said something positive about each one.
