Why heaven is so far away

This story comes from Ghana in Africa. It says that way back in the beginning, heaven was so near to 

earth that a housewife who was crushing her sweet potatoes into a pulp by hammering them with end of a long pole, kept poking the pole in the bottom of heaven.

                God, who live up there, was not happy with the disturbance. So he complained to the good lady. But she paid no attention at all and kept right on mashing her sweet potatoes and prodding into the bottom of heaven.

                So the Lord got angry and shouted down to her, “Because you humans don’t appreciated my nearness. I’m going to rise so high in the sky that none of you will ever be able to reach me.”

                That is the African explanation of why we spend our lives trying to get to heaven and it always seems to be so far away.

                Come to think of it, though, maybe we’re looking in the wrong places. According to the Scriptures, the kingdom of heaven is within us.

What a perfect place to hide it: very few people look inside.

 - From a German newspaper clipping

Playground Inspiration

Jane Nidetch was a 214-pound housewife. She was desperate to lose weight. After two steady months of dieting, she was still 50 pounds overweight. So she invited six overweight friends to her house to share her diet and talk about how to stay on it.

Today, 28 years later, one million member attend 25,000 ‘Weight Watcher’ meetings in 24 countries every week.

Mrs. Nidetch says she got her inspiration to help people take control of their lives, from a childhood incident. As a teenager she used to walk pas a playground. Mothers brought kids there to play, and then they would get so deep in gossip that they completely forgot about the children. The toddlers sat on their swings, but no one was giving them a push start. So she gave each of them a push. And you know what happens aster that: the swinger’s starts pumping and swinging by himself.

“That’s what my role in this weight watching has been," says Mrs. Nidetch. “I’m here to give others a push start.”

-Irene Sax in Newsday

Find your real self

What if you could be anything? Who would you choose to be? Would you be a strong business leader? A movie star? A sports hero or heroine? A famous politician? 
A reporter asked the famous George Bernard Shaw that "what if" question before he died. Here is how he put it: 

"Mr. Shaw, you have visited with some of the most famous people of the world. You have known royalty, world-renowned authors, artist and teacher. If you could live from history, who would you like to be?"

Shaw replied, "I would choose to be the man George Bernard Shaw could have been but never was."

What an insight! Very few people ever achieve all the greatness that is really inside them. 

Don't wish to be somebody else. Wish to be yourself - but better.

~Quot

Hot Dogs For Christmas

One Christmas eve a prosperous businessman was hurrying to the butcher shop before

closing time.

"are you buying your Christmas roast?" a friend asked,

"No. Only hot dogs," he answered,

then he explained that long ago a bank failure had completely wiped out his fortune. He faced Christmas with no job, no money for gifts and less than a dollar for food. He and his wife and small daughter said grace before dinner that year and then ate a Christmas dinner of hot dogs. His wife had decorated each of them, giving toothpicks for legs and broom straws for tails and whiskers. Their little girl was delighted and her radiant joy spread to all of them. 

After dinner, they gave thanks again for the most loving and festive time they had ever had together.

"Now it's a tradition," said the once again prosperous man. 

"Hot dogs for Christmas - they remind us of that happy day when we realized that we still had one another and our God-given sense of humor."

-Tony Castle

Where God Is

One day a band of gypsies stopped at a farmer's well. One of them, a giant of the man, dropped a bucket into the well and pulled it back up with the attached cord. He then drank right out of the bucket with large, grateful gulps... as streams of water ran down his red beard. When he finished, he mopped his face with his handkerchief, leaned over the well and keep looking into it.

Meanwhile, the farmer's little son was watching all this. Wondering what the gypsy was looking at, he also tried to pull himself up tot he rim of the well and have a look. The gigantic gypsy laughingly scooped the boy into his arms and pointed down into the well. 

"Do you know who lives down there?" he asked.

The boy shook his head. "God lives down there," the gypsy said.

"Look!"

The boy stared down into the well and all he could see was his own reflection, "That's only me," he said.

"Ah," said the gypsy, as he gently set the boy down, "now you know where God lives."

-Freda Ruth in Sunshine

Everything Criticized

The owner of a fish market was very proud of his new sign, which said: “Fresh Fish For

Sale Here.”

Then along came a passerby and asked, “why do you have the word ‘fresh’ on the sign? You wouldn’t sell another kind would you?”

So he painted out the word and the sign now read: “Fish For Sale Here.”

Another critic said, “Why do you say ‘here’? That’s understood, isn’t it?”

So, off came that word, and the sing now read: “Fish For Sale.”

Then a third man objected, “Why use the words ‘For Sale’? you wouldn’t have fish here if they were not for sale.”

So now the only word left on the sign was, “Fish.” “Surely no one can find fault with that.” Though the storekeeper.

But then another dissenter appeared. “I see no sense in putting up that sign ‘Fish,’ he said. You can smell them a block away.” 

So that’s why the fish market has no sign!

Counting years Backwards

Somewhere in South America there is an Indian tribe whose idea of the past and future

seems to be exactly opposite to ours. We refer to the past as behind us, and to the future as ahead of us.

To this particular tribe however, the past is thought of as being ahead of them, and the future as being behind them.

At first, this may seem very strange to us, and many will undoubtedly wonder how anyone could possibly think that way. 

The reasoning of these Indians is quite logical. It goes like this: All that they have experienced: their mistakes and failures and lessons learned and so on is considered as being in front of them. And it is there for their contemplation and betterment. The future, on the other hand, is behind them because it has not been experienced.

We have this same idea in Tok Pisin, where we refer to the future as taim bihain, that is, the time that is coming somewhat later. 

The only negative expression is the lot, is to say the someone’s future is behind them!

-after W. Brawand, SIL