O Stories

        Somebody’s children John and Mary had a nice home and two lovely children, a boy and a girl. John had a good job and had just been asked to go on a business trip to another city and would be gone for several days. It was decided that Mary would go along too.  They hired a reliable woman to care for the children and made the trip, returning home a little earlier than they had planned.  As they drove home, they noticed smoke,  and  they went off their usual route to see what it was. They found a home in flames.  Mary said, "Oh well it isn't our fire, let's go home."  But John drove closer and exclaimed, "That home belongs to Fred Jones who works at the plant. He wouldn't be off work yet, maybe there is something we could do." "You have your good clothes on lets not get any closer,” said Mary. But John drove up and stopped and they were both horror stricken to see the whole hou...

Tree of life Don’t judge a life by one difficult season.  There was a man who had four sons. He wanted his sons to learn to not judge things too quickly. So he sent them each on a quest, in turn, to go and look at a pear tree that was a great distance away.  The first son went in the winter, the second in the spring, the third in summer, and the youngest son in the fall.  When they had all gone and come back, he called them together to describe what they had seen.  The first son said that the tree was ugly, bent, and twisted. The second son said no — it was covered with green buds and full of promise.  The third son disagreed, he said it was laden with blossoms that smelled so sweet and looked so beautiful, it was the most graceful thing he had ever seen.  The last son disagreed with all of them; he said it was ripe and drooping with fruit, full of life and fulfillment.  The man then explained to his sons that they were ...

Weakness or strength Sometimes our biggest weakness can become our biggest strength. Take, for example, the story of one 10-year-old boy who decided to study judo despite the fact that he had only one arm. He had lost his left arm in a devastating car accident. The boy began lessons with an old Japanese judo master. The boy was doing well, so he couldn’t understand why, after three months of training the master had taught him only one move. “Sensei,” the boy finally said, “Shouldn’t I be learning more moves?” “This is the only move you know, but this is the only move you’ll ever need to know,” – the sensei replied. Not quite understanding, but believing in his teacher, the boy kept training. Several months later, the sensei took the boy to his first tournament. Surprising himself, the boy easily won his first two matches. The third match proved to be more difficult, but after some time, his opponent became impatient and charged; the boy deftly used his ...

Married or Not Suddenly  “When I got home that night as my wife served dinner, I held her hand and said, I have got something to tell you. She sat down and ate quietly. Again I observed the hurt in her eyes .  I didn’t know how to open my mouth. But I had to let her know what I was thinking. I want a divorce. I raised the topic calmly. She didn’t seem to be annoyed by my words, instead she asked me softly, why?  I avoided her question. This made her angry. She threw away the chopsticks and shouted at me, you are not a man! That night, we didn’t talk to each other. She was weeping. I knew she wanted to find out what had happened to our marriage. But I could hardly give her a satisfactory answer; she had lost my heart to Jane. I didn’t love her anymore. I just pitied her! With a deep sense of guilt, I drafted a divorce agreement which stated that she could own our house, our car, and 30% stake of my company. She glanced at it and then tore it into pieces. The wom...

The Empty Chair A SICK MAN'S daughter had asked the local pastor to come and pray with her father. When the pastor arrived, he found the man lying in bed with his head propped up on two pillows and an empty chair beside his bed. The priest assumed that the old fellow had been informed of his visit. "I guess you were expecting me," he said.  "No, who are you?" "I'm the new associate at your local church," the pastor replied. "When I saw the empty chair, I figured you knew I was going to show up." "Oh yeah, the chair," said the bedridden man. "Would you mind closing the door?" Puzzled, the pastor shut the door. "I've never told anyone this, not even my daughter," said the man. "But all of my life I have never known how to pray. At church I used to hear the pastor talk about prayer, but it always went right over my head.." "I abandoned any attempt at prayer,...

  The cake and the kitchen CINDY GLANCED nervously at the clock on the kitchen wall. "They should be home any time now," she thought as she put the finishing touches on the chocolate cake. It was the first time in her 12 years she had tried to make a cake, and it wasn't exactly an aesthetic triumph.  The cake was . . . well, lumpy. And the frosting was bitter, as if she had run out of sugar. Which, of course, she had. And then there was the way the kitchen looked.  But Cindy wasn't thinking about the mess. She had created something, a veritable phoenix of flour and sugar rising out of the kitchen clutter She was anxious for her parents to return home so she could present her anniversary gift. She turned off the lights and waited excitedly in the darkness. Her parents tried to slip in quietly, but Cindy flipped on the lights and gestured grandly toward the kitchen table, where a slightly off- balanced  two-layer chocolate cake awai...

A YOUNG woman went to her mother and told her about her life and how things were so hard. She was tired of fighting and struggling.  Her mother took her to the kitchen. She filled three pots with water and placed each on fire. In the first, she placed carrots, in the second she placed eggs, and in the last she placed ground coffee beans. She let these sit and boil, without saying a word. In about 20 minutes, she turned off the burners. She fished the carrots out and placed them in a bowl.  She pulled the eggs out and placed them in a bowl. Then she ladled the coffee out and placed it in a bowl. Turning to her daughter, she asked, "Tell me, what do you see?" The mother asked her to feel the carrots. She did and noted that they were soft. She then asked her to break an egg.  After pulling off the shell, she observed the hard-boiled egg. Finally, she asked her to sip the coffee. The daughter smiled as she tasted its rich aroma.  ...

    The mouse trap A mouse looked through the crack in the wall to see the farmer and his wife open a package. “What food might this contain?” the mouse wondered. He was devastated to discover it was a mousetrap.  Retreating to the farmyard, the mouse proclaimed the warning: “There is a mousetrap in the house! There is a mousetrap in the house!”  The chicken raised her head and said “Mr Mouse, I can tell this is a grave concern to you, but it is of no consequence to me.”  The pig sympathised, but said “I am so very sorry, Mr Mouse, but there is nothing I can do about it but pray.”  The cow said, “Mr Mouse, I’m sorry for you, but it's no skin off my nose.”  So, the mouse returned to the house, head down and dejected, to face the farmer's mousetrap alone.  That very night a sound was heard throughout the house — like the sound of a mousetrap catching its prey. The farmer’s wife rushed to see what was caught....

                     Be Happy Now! WE CONVINCE ourselves that life will be better after we get married, have a baby, then another. Then we're frustrated that the kids aren't old enough and we'll be more content when they are. After that, we're frustrated that we have teenagers to deal with. We'll certainly be happy when they're out of that stage.                        We tell ourselves that our life will be complete when our spouse gets his or her act together, when we get a nicer car, are able to go on a nice vacation, when we retire. The truth is, there's no better time to be happy than right now. If not now, when? Your life will always be filled with challenges. It's best to admit this to yourself and decide to be happy anyway. One of my favorite quotes, “For a long time it had seemed to me that life was about to begin - real life. But there was alw...

   A different kind of athlete We found out that Jenny was hearing impaired, when she was four and a half years old. Several surgeries and speech classes later, when she was seven, we found out that Jenny had juvenile rheumatoid arthritis (JRV).  She could not put pressure on the heels of her feet, so she walked on tiptoe, and when the pain became unbearable, I carried her. Jenny was fortunate, though, because she did not suffer the deformities, often associated with JRV.  All through grade school, and on into high school, Jenny suffered, yet never complained.  Jenny, a beautiful blonde, with warm brown eyes, was never a cheerleader. She never competed in a sport. She took the same health class four years in a row, just so she could pass with a substitute credit each year. No one in the Charleston, South Carolina School System knew what to do with Jenny. The perimeters were, simply, not in place to deal with a student, who was both active ...

            Disabled love The Creightons were very proud of their son, Frank. When he went to college, naturally they missed him; but he wrote and they looked forward to his letters and saw him on weekends. Then Frank was drafted into the army. After he had been in the army about five months, he received his call to go to Vietnam. Of course, the parents’ anxiety was greater than ever before. And ever week they heard from him and were thankful for his well-being. Then one week went by without a letter ,two weeks and finally three. At the end of the third week a telegram came, saying, “We regret to inform you that your son has been missing for three weeks and is presumed to have been killed in action while fighting for his country.” The parents were grieved. They tried to accept the situation and go on living, but it was tragically lonesome. About three weeks later, however, the phone rang. A voice on the other end said,...

       On oars of courage In 1982 Steven Callahan was crossing the Atlantic alone in his sailboat when it struck something and sank. He was out of the shipping lanes and floating in a life raft, alone. His supplies were few. His fishermen found him seventy-six days later (the longest anyone has survived a shipwreck on a life raft alone), he was alive -- much skinnier than he was when he started, but alive. His account of how he survived is fascinating. His ingenuity -- how he managed to catch fish, how he fixed his solar still (evaporates sea water to make fresh) -- is very interesting. But the thing that caught my eye was how he managed to keep himself going when all hope seemed lost, when there seemed no point in continuing the struggle, when he was suffering greatly, when his life raft was punctured and after more than a week struggling with his weak body to fix it, it was still leaking air and wearing him out to keep pumping it up. H...