Stories for the Heart: Over 100 Stories to Encourage Your Soul (Paperback)

COMPASSION...............................................................13
    TOGETHER by Emery Nester
    THE DAY PHILIP JOINED THE GROUP by Paul Harvey
    A SONG IN THE DARK by Max Lucado
    THERE'S ALWAYS SOMETHING LEFT TO LOVE by Tony Campolo
    BELONGING by Paul Brand and Philip Yancey
    REALLY WINNING by Michael Broome, retold by Alice Gray
    COURAGE by author unknown
    HUMPTY DUMPTY REVISITED by Vic Pentz
    LESSONS FROM A YOUNG NURSE by Rebecca Manley Pippert
    ONE by Everett Hale
    IT MATTERS by Jeff Ostrander
    UNDERSTANDING MERCY by Alice Gray
    TOO WONDERFUL
ENCOURAGEMENT............................................................35
    CHOSEN by Marie Curling
    THE FIRST ROBIN by William E. Barton
    DON'T QUIT by Charles R. Swindoll
    THE GUEST OF THE MAESTRO by Max Lucado
    JIMMY DURANTE by Tim Hansel
    THE DAY BART SIMPSON PRAYED by Lee Strobel
    AT THE COUNTER by Paula Kirk
    ALL THE GOOD THINGS by Sister Helen P. Mrosla
    THE HAND
    THE KISS by Richard Selzer
    CHANGED LIVES by Tim Kimmel
    HUGS
    THE PASSERBY by Hester Tetreault
    JUST A KID WITH CEREBRAL PALSY by Tony Campolo
    REPEAT PERFORMANCE by Nancy Spiegelberg
VIRTUES..................................................................63
    ACT MEDIUM by Leslie B. Flynn
    VALENTINES by Dale Galloway
    CHOOSING by Victor E. Frankl
    IT'S A START by Gary Smalley and John Trent
    WHAT'S IT LIKE IN YOUR TOWN? retold by Kris Gray
    IT REALLY DIDN'T MATTER by Charles Colson
    MONUMENTS by Charles L. Allen
    CHICKENS by Anne Paden
    THE MILLIONAIRE AND THE SCRUBLADY by William E. Barton
    THE SIGNAL by Alice Gray
    RESEMBLANCE
    A GIFT FROM THE HEART by Norman Vincent Peale
    THANKFUL IN EVERYTHING? by Matthew Henry
    THE GOOD SAMARITAN by Tim Hansel
    CONTENTMENT IS ... by Ruth Senter
    PRAYER OF ST. FRANCIS OF ASSISI
MOTIVATION...............................................................93
    VISION an old Chinese proverb
    KEEPER OF THE SPRING by Charles R. Swindoll
    A MAN CAN'T JUST SIT AROUND by Chip McGregor
    COME ON, GET WITH IT! by Howard Hendricks
    THE NEAREST BATTLE by Richard C. Halverson
    MENTORING by Chip McGregor
    SUCCESS by Alice Gray
    THE RED UMBRELLA retold by Tania Gray
    ALL IT TAKES IS A LITTLE MOTIVATION by Zig Ziglar
    AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY IN FIVE SHORT PARAGRAPHS by Portia Nelson
    BEAUTIFUL DAY, ISN'T IT? by Barbara Johnson
    DON'T GIVE UP by Alice Gray
    HEAD HUNTER by Josh McDowell
    IF I HAD MY LIFE TO LIVE OVER by Brother Jeremiah
    OUR EYES ON THE GOAL by Carole Mayhall
    LETTER TO A COACH by an Athlete's Dad
    THE GREATNESS OF AMERICA by Alexander de Tocqueville
    BULLETS OR SEEDS by Richard C. Halverson
LOVE....................................................................115
    OUTWITTED by Edwin Markham
    THE PEOPLE WITH THE ROSES by Max Lucado
    REFLECTIONS by Charles R. Swindoll
    THE SMALL GIFT by Morris Chalfant, retold by Marilyn K. McAuley
    FOR MY SISTER by David C. Needham
    DELAYED DELIVERY by Cathy Miller
    IN THE TRENCHES by Stu Weber
    GARMENT OF LOVE by Mother Teresa
    A CRUMPLED PHOTOGRAPH by Philip Yancey
    LETTING GO
    LOVE'S POWER by Alan Loy McGinnis
    THE GIFT OF THE MAGI by O. Henry
    BELIEVING IN EACH OTHER by Steve Stephens
    ACT OF LOVE by Alice Gray
    COME HOME by Max Lucado
FAMILY..................................................................149
    BLESSED by Theodore Roosevelt
    SOMEDAY by Charles R. Swindoll
    "LONGER, DADDY ... LONGER" by John Trent
    WISDOM
    BALLOONS by James Dobson
    WHAT'S A GRANDMOTHER? by a Third Grader
    WALLS by Richard A. McCray
    SOFT TOUCH by James Dobson
    WHEN YOU THOUGHT I WASN'T LOOKING by Mary Rita Schilke Korzan
    GROWING UP by Marilyn K. McAuley
    EVEN IF IT'S DARK by Ron Mehl
    GOT A MINUTE? by David Jeremiah
    A FATHER'S PRAYER OF ENLIGHTENMENT by John Ellis
    SUMMER VACATION by Bruce Larson
    TO MY GROWN-UP SON
    CHRISTMAS DAY IN THE MORNING by Pearl S. Buck
    27 THINGS NOT TO SAY TO YOUR SPOUSE by Steve Stephens
    37 THINGS TO SAY TO YOUR SPOUSE by Steve Stephens
    OF MORE VALUE by Jerry B. Jenkins
    TESTAMENT by Patrick Henry
    A SON OF SUCH TEARS by Ruth Bell Graham, retold by Casandra Lindell
    A FAMILY FOR FREDDIE by Abbie Blair
    BUILD ME A SON by General Douglas A. MacArthur
    GREAT LADY by Tim Hansel
LIFE....................................................................193
    BEAUTIFUL THINGS by Helen Keller
    KENNEDY'S QUESTION by Billy Graham
    TRUSTING by Alice Marquardt
    IF WE HAD HURRIED by Billy Rose
    SPRING FILLY by Nancy Spiegelberg
    LAUGHTER by Tim Hansel
    THE HAMMER, THE FILE, AND THE FURNACE by Charles R. Swindoll
    THREE MEN AND A BRIDGE by Sandy Snavely
    INCREDIBLE! by David Jeremiah
    STRUGGLES by Alice Gray
    HE LISTENED by Joseph Bayly
    I BELIEVE from a concentration camp
    DO YOU WISH TO GET WELL? by Kay Arthur
    HERITAGE by Sally J. Knower
    OLD-AGE—IT'S LATER THAN YOU THINK
    THE ORCHESTRA by Judy Urschel Straalsund
    DO YOU KNOW WHO HIS DADDY IS? by Zig Ziglar
    LEADERSHIP
    LET GO by Billy Graham
    THE RUNAWAYS by Cliff Schimmels
    BROKEN DREAMS by Lauretta P. Burns
    CHANGE by Martin Luther King Jr.
    SIGNIFICANCE by Joni Eareckson Tada
    DARK ENOUGH by Ralph Waldo Emerson
    SOMEBODY LOVED HIM by Rebecca Manley Pippert
    TO ENDURE by William Barclay
    HOMECOMING by Michael Broome, retold by Alice Gray
    PICTURE OF PEACE by Catherine Marshall
    I ASKED ...
    LIFE IS LIKE THAT by Josh McDowell
    TAPS
FAITH...................................................................239
    WHERE DO YOU RUN? by Kay Arthur
    DEAR BRISTOL by James Dobson
    THE JUGGLER by Billy Graham, retold by Alice Gray
    THE TALE OF THREE TREES retold by Angela Elwell Hunt
    THE PARABLE OF EXTRAVAGANT LOVE by Lloyd John Ogilvie
    ONE SOLITARY LIFE
    CECIL B. De MILLE by Billy Graham
    OBJECT LESSON by John MacArthur
    RIGHT ON TIME by Ron Mehl
    JUMP retold by Tania Gray
    APPOINTMENT WITH DEATH by Alice Gray
    THE STORY OF THE PRAYING HANDS
    LEARNING 'BOUT PRAYER by Howard Hendricks
    THE SECRET OF THE GIFTS by Paul Flucke
    PARACLETE by David Seamands
    SELLING CATTLE by Howard Hendricks
    WHAT IF I GET TIRED OF BEING IN HEAVEN? by Larry Libby

Chapter One

Compassion

The Day Philip
Joined the Group

Paul Harvey

with acknowledgement to Rev. Harry Pritchett Jr., rector of All Saints Episcopal Church in Atlanta, who called my attention to a boy named Philip.

He was 9—in a Sunday school class of 8-year-olds.

    Eight-year-olds can be cruel.

    The third-graders did not welcome Philip to their group. Not just because he was older. He was "different."

    He suffered from Down's syndrome and its obvious manifestations: facial characteristics, slow responses, symptoms of retardation.

    One Sunday after Easter the Sunday school teacher gathered some of those plastic eggs that pull apart in the middle—the kind in which some ladies' pantyhose are packaged.

    The Sunday school teacher gave one of these plastic eggs to each child.

    On that beautiful spring day each child was to go outdoors and discover for himself some symbol of "new life" and place that symbolic seed or leaf or whatever inside his egg.

    They would then open their eggs one by one, and each youngster would explain how his find was a symbol of "new life."

    So ...

    The youngsters gathered 'round on the appointed day and put their eggs on a table, and the teacher began to open them.

    One child had found a flower.

    All the children "oohed" and "aahed" at the lovely symbol of new life.

    In another was a butterfly. "Beautiful," the girls said. And it's not easy for an 8-year-old to say "beautiful."

    Another egg was opened to reveal a rock. Some of the children laughed.

    "That's crazy!" one said. "How's a rock supposed to be like a `new life'?"

    Immediately a little boy spoke up and said, "That's mine. I knew everybody would get flowers and leaves and butterflies and all that stuff, so I got a rock to be different."

    Everyone laughed.

    The teacher opened the last one, and there was nothing inside.

    "That's not fair," someone said. "That's stupid," said another.

    Teacher felt a tug on his shirt. It was Philip. Looking up he said, "It's mine. I did do it. It's empty. I have new life because the tomb is empty."

    The class fell silent.

    From that day on Philip became part of the group. They welcomed him. Whatever had made him different was never mentioned again.

    Philip's family had known he would not live a long life; just too many things wrong with the tiny body. That summer, overcome with infection, Philip died.

    On the day of his funeral nine 8-year-old boys and girls confronted the reality of death and marched up to the altar—not with flowers.

    Nine children with their Sunday school teacher placed on the casket of their friend their gift of love—an empty egg.

* * *

A Song in the Dark

Max Lucado

On any other day, I probably wouldn't have stopped. Like the majority of people on the busy avenue, I would hardly have noticed him standing there. But the very thing on my mind was the very reason he was them, so I stopped.

    I'd just spent a portion of the morning preparing a lesson out of the ninth chapter of John, the chapter that contains the story about the man blind from birth. I'd finished lunch and was returning to my office when I saw him. He was singing. An aluminum cane was in his left hand; his right hand was extended and open, awaiting donations. He was blind.

    After walking past him about five steps, I stopped and mumbled something to myself about the epitome of hypocrisy and went back in his direction. I put some change in his hand. "Thank you," he said and then offered me a common Brazilian translation, "and may you have health." Ironic wish.

    Once again I started on my way. Once again the morning's study of John 9 stopped me. "Jesus saw a man, blind from birth." I paused and pondered. If Jesus were here he would see this man. I wasn't sure what that meant. But I was sure I hadn't done it. So I turned around again.

    As if the giving of a donation entitled me to do so, I stopped beside a nearby car and observed. I challenged myself to see him. I would stay here until I saw more than a sightless indigent on a busy thoroughfare in downtown Rio de Janeiro.

    I watched him sing. Some beggars grovel in a corner cultivating pity. Others unashamedly lay their children on blankets in the middle of the sidewalk thinking that only the hardest of hearts would ignore a dirty, naked infant asking for bread.

    But this man did none of that. He stood. He stood tall. And he sang. Loudly. Even proudly. All of us had more reason to sing than he, but he was the one singing. Mainly, he sang folk songs. Once I thought he was singing a hymn, though I wasn't sure.

    His husky voice was out of place amid the buzz of commerce. Like a sparrow who found his way into a noisy factory, or a lost fawn on an interstate, his singing conjured up an awkward marriage between progress and simplicity.

    The passersby had various reactions. Some were curious and gazed unabashedly. Others were uncomfortable. They were quick to duck their heads or walk in a wider circle. "No reminders of harshness today, please." Most, however, hardly noticed him. Their thoughts were occupied, their agendas were full and he was ... well, he was a blind beggar.

    I was thankful he couldn't see the way they looked at him.

    After a few minutes, I went up to him again. "Have you had any lunch?" I asked. He stopped singing. He turned his head toward the sound of my voice and directed his face somewhere past my ear. His eye sockets were empty. He said he was hungry. I went to a nearby restaurant and bought him a sandwich and something cold to drink.

    When I came back he was still singing and his hands were still empty. He was grateful for the food. We sat down on a nearby bench. Between bites he told me about himself. Twenty-eight years old. Single. Living with his parents and seven brothers. "Were you born blind?"

    "No, when I was young I had an accident." He didn't volunteer any details and I didn't have the gall to request them.

    Though we were almost the same age, we were light-years apart. My three decades had been a summer vacation of family excursions, Sunday school, debate teams, football, and a search for the Mighty One. Growing up blind in the Third World surely offered none of these. My daily concern now involved people, thoughts, concepts, and communication. His day was stitched with concerns of survival: coins, handouts, and food. I'd go home to a nice apartment, a hot meal, and a good wife. I hated to think of the home he would encounter. I'd seen enough overcrowded huts on the hills of Rio to make a reasonable guess. And his reception ... would there be anyone there to make him feel special when he got home?

    I came whisker-close to asking him, "Does it make you mad that I'm not you?" "Do you ever lie awake at night wondering why the hand you were dealt was so different from the one given a million or so others born thirty years ago?"

    I wore a shirt and tie and some new shoes. His shoes had holes and his coat was oversized and bulky. His pants gaped open from a rip in the knee.

    And still he sang. Though a sightless, penniless hobo, he still found a song and sang it courageously. (I wondered which room in his heart that song came from.)

    At worst, I figured, he sang from desperation. His song was all he had. Even when no one gave any coins, he still had his song. Yet he seemed too peaceful to be singing out of self-preservation.

    Or perhaps he sang from ignorance. Maybe he didn't know what he had never had.

    No, I decided the motivation that fit his demeanor was the one you'd least expect. He was singing from contentment. Somehow this eyeless pauper had discovered a candle called satisfaction and it glowed in his dark world. Someone had told him, or maybe he'd told himself, that tomorrow's joy is fathered by today's acceptance. Acceptance of what, at least for the moment, you cannot alter.

    I looked up at the Niagara of faces that flowed past us. Grim. Professional. Some determined. Some disguised. But none were singing, not even silently. What if each face were a billboard that announced the true state of the owner's heart? How many would say "Desperate! Business on the rocks!" or "Broken: In Need of Repair," or "Faithless, Frantic, and Fearful"? Quite a few.

    The irony was painfully amusing. This blind man could be the most peaceful fellow on the street. No diploma, no awards, and no future—at least in the aggressive sense of the word. But I wondered how many in that urban stampede would trade their boardrooms and blue suits in a second for a chance to drink at this young man's well.

    "Faith is the bird that sings while it is yet dark."

    Before I helped my friend back to his position, I tried to verbalize my empathy. "Life is hard, isn't it?" A slight smile. He again turned his face toward the direction of my voice and started to respond, then paused and said, "I'd better get back to work."

    For almost a block, I could hear him singing. And in my mind's eye I could still see him. But the man I now saw was a different one than the one to whom I'd given a few coins. Though the man I now saw was still sightless, he was remarkably insightful. And though I was the one with eyes, it was he who gave me a new vision.

* * *

There's Always Something Left to Love

Tony Campolo

Some years ago, I saw Lorraine Hansberry's play, Raisin in the Sun, and heard a passage that still haunts me. In the play, an African-American family inherits $10,000 from their father's life insurance policy. The mother of the household sees in this legacy the chance to escape the ghetto life of Harlem and move into a little house with flower boxes out in the countryside. The brilliant daughter of this family sees in the money the chance to live out her dream and go to medical school.

    But the older brother has a plea that is difficult to ignore. He begs for the money so that he and his "friend" can go into business together. He tells the family that with the money he can make something of himself and make things good for the rest of them. He promises that if he can just have the money, he can give back to the family all the blessings that their hard lives have denied them.

    Against her better judgment, the mother gives in to the pleas of her son. She has to admit that life's chances have never been good for him and that he deserves the chance that this money might give him.

    As you might suspect, the so called "friend" skips town with the money. The desolate son has to return home and break the news to the family that their hopes for the future have been stolen and their dreams for a better life are gone. His sister lashes into him with a barrage of ugly epitaphs. She calls him every despicable thing she can imagine. Her contempt for her brother has no limits.

    When she takes a breath in the midst of her tirade, the mother interrupts her and says, "I thought I taught you to love him."

    Beneatha, the daughter, answers, "Love him? There's nothing left to love."

    And the mother responds: "There's always something left to love. And if you ain't learned that, you ain't learned nothing. Have you cried for that boy today? I don't mean for yourself and the family because we lost all that money. I mean for him: for what he's been through and what it done to him. Child, when do you think is the time to love somebody the most: when they done good and made things easy for everybody? Well then, you ain't through learning, because that ain't the time at all. It's when he's at his lowest and can't believe in himself 'cause the world done whipped him so. When you starts measuring somebody, measure him right, child, measure him right. Make sure you done taken into account what hills and valleys he done come through before he got to wherever he is."

    That is grace! It is love that is given when it is not deserved. It is forgiveness given when it is not earned. It is a gift that flows like a refreshing stream to quench the fires of angry condemning words.

    How much more loving and forgiving is the Father's love for us? And how much more is the grace of God for us?

* * *

Belonging

Paul Brand and Philip Yancey

John Karmegan came to me in Vellore, India, as a leprosy patient in an advanced state of the disease. We could do little for him surgically since both his feet and hands had already been damaged irreparably. We could, however, offer him a place to stay and employment in the New Life Center.

    Because of one-sided facial paralysis, John could not smile normally. When he tried, the uneven distortion of his features would draw attention to his paralysis. People often responded with a gasp or a gesture of fear, so he learned not to smile. Margaret, my wife, had stitched his eyelids partly closed to protect his sight. John grew more and more paranoid about what others thought of him.

    He caused terrible problems socially, perhaps in reaction to his marred appearance. He expressed his anger at the world by acting the part of a troublemaker, and I remember many tense scenes in which we had to confront John with some evidence of stealing or dishonesty. He treated fellow patients cruelly, and resisted all authority, going so far as to organize hunger strikes against us. By almost anyone's reckoning, he was beyond rehabilitation.

    Perhaps John's very irredeemability attracted my mother to him, for she often latched onto the least desirable specimens of humanity. She took to John, spent time with him, and eventually led him into the Christian faith. He was baptized in a cement tank on the grounds of the leprosarium.

    Conversion, however, did not temper John's high dudgeon against the world. He gained some friends among fellow patients, but a lifetime of rejection and mistreatment had permanently embittered him against all nonpatients. One day, almost defiantly, he asked me what would happen if he visited the local Tamil church in Vellore.

    I went to the leaders of the church, described John, and assured them that despite obvious deformities, he had entered a safe phase of the arrested disease and would not endanger the congregation. They agreed he could visit. "Can he take communion?" I asked, knowing that the church used a common cup. They looked at each other, thought for a moment, and agreed that he could also take communion.

    Shortly thereafter I took John to the church, which met in a plain, whitewashed brick building with a corrugated iron roof. It was a tense moment for him. Those of us on the outside can hardly imagine the trauma and paranoia inside a leprosy patient who attempts for the first time to enter that kind of setting. I stood with him at the back of the church. His paralyzed face showed no reaction, but a trembling gave away his inner turmoil. I prayed silently that no church member would show the slightest hint of rejection.

    As we entered during the singing of the first hymn, an Indian man toward the back half-turned and saw us. We must have made an odd couple: a white person standing next to a leprosy patient with patches of his skin in garish disarray. I held my breath.

    And then it happened. The man put down his hymnal, smiled broadly, and patted the chair next to him, inviting John to join him. John could not have been more startled. Haltingly, he made shuffling half-steeps to the row and took his seat. I breathed a prayer of thanks.

    That one incident proved to be the turning point of John's life. Years later I visited Vellore and made a side trip to a factory that had been set up to employ disabled people. The manager wanted to show me a machine that produced tiny screws for typewriter parts. As we walked through the noisy plant, he shouted at me that he would introduce me to his prize employee, a man who had just won the parent corporation's all-India prize for the highest quality work with fewest rejects. As we arrived at his work station, the employee turned to greet us, and I saw the unmistakable crooked face of John Karmegan. He wiped the grease off his stumpy hand and grinned with the ugliest, the loveliest, most radiant smile I had ever seen. He held out for my inspection a palmful of the small precision screws that had won him the prize.

    A simple gesture of acceptance may not seem like much, but for John Karmegan it proved decisive. After a lifetime of being judged on his own physical image, he had finally been welcomed on the basis of another Image. I had seen a replay of Christ's own reconciliation. His Spirit had prompted the Body on earth to adopt a new member, and at last John knew he belonged.

* * *

Chapter One

Hester Tetreault

I saw him most mornings when I looked out of the living room window. He became part of my day. Slightly bent, he dragged one leg a little, the foot twisted so that he walked more on the side of his foot than the sole. I guessed he was in his eighties. He wore only a flannel shirt. When I could see his breath against the air on a frosty morning, I wondered if he was cold.

While working in the garden one morning, I saw the old man smile and tousle the hair of a small boy who passed by him on his way into school.

"It's now or never," I decided, emboldened to cross the street and introduce myself.

His pale blue eyes enlivened and his face wrinkled in another smile. This time for me. "My wife and I are from Switzerland. We came first to Canada and then to America, many years ago," he told me. "We work very hard. In time we save enough to buy our own farm. I do not speak English so good, so I pick up children's first readers and secretly I study until I learn," he laughed. He gazed toward the elementary school beyond the wire fence, and his face grew solemn. "We never had any children."

I pondered the conversation in the quiet of the day, touched deeply by the loneliness in his voice as he spoke of the few remaining relatives in his native homeland, distanced not only by miles, but by lives lived worlds apart.

"My wife is not so good," he told me when I asked about her.

I wanted to jump in, offer help, be a friend, but I had already pushed myself upon this stranger. Reserve ruled the moment. I pointed to my house. "Please," I said, leaving the next overture to his discretion, "stop in and have a cup of coffee with me sometime when you are out walking."

I didn't see him after that, but I thought about him often. Was he housebound or sick? Had his wife's health deteriorated suddenly? If only I knew his name, or where he lived. My invitation mocked me with its ineptitude. I had so wanted to be a friend.

Months went by before I saw him again. On an errand, and only fifteen minutes' walk from home, I saw the familiar limp and swing. He moved slowly, shoulders slumped, and one foot twisted so that the heel did not stay in his shoe. His pale face was thinner than I remembered, but his eyes still twinkled, and he smiled in recognition as I reintroduced myself. I learned his name was Paul.

"I don't walk as far as I used to," he explained. "My wife, I cannot leave her very long. Her mind is going," he grimaced with a touch to his forehead, "she forgets things." He gestured toward a green and white wood-framed house across the street and said, "Would you like to come in and see my drawings?"

"I'm on my way to pick up my car from the garage," I said regretfully, "but I'd love to see them another time."

"You come this evening, then?" He looked hopeful.

"Oh, yes," I said, "I'll come this evening."

The pungent smell of damp fir needles permeated the chill, sulky evening air. Paul stood expectantly by the window. When he opened the door, he was groomed for company.

His wife, slender and frail, came from the kitchen, tucking wisps of white hair back into a tidy bun. "Come in, come in," she bid, with a smile full of the grace of her generation. She reached out a worn, soft hand.

"This," Paul said, "is my wife, Bertha." He straightened and grew in stature. "We've been married fifty-six years."

That evening I was introduced to Paul's pen and ink sketches. We went from room to room. Pictures hung in modest frames, pages were tucked in drawers. There were sketches of celebrities, scenes, anything that took his fancy. Each had a story.

But the compelling story was the harsh reality of talent ignored for people like him of that generation. "It won't put bread on the table," his father told him. "If you sit around drawing like that you'll never amount to anything."

His mother died when he was nine. He remembered the gentle tap of her stick against his head whenever she found him with pad and pencil in hand. "Make yourself useful. Don't waste your time," she chided.

When we returned to the kitchen, Bertha searched for some tangible expression of her hospitality. "I wish I had cookies to offer you. I can't cook like I used to."

"I couldn't eat a thing, I just finished dinner," I said.

Their dinner was "meals on wheels," three days a week. "We cannot eat so much. We have plenty for the next day. Except Mondays. Mondays we try to cook for ourselves."

They wanted me to stay awhile. We sat and talked. Dignity filled their house.

Paul answered the door the following Monday. His eyes fell on the tray I carried.

He was glad I'd come, but his pinched and agitated face told me I'd stumbled upon an outburst of anger.

Bertha, pale and flustered, gathered herself. "We're not feeling so good today, and I'm having trouble with my head and remembering." She threw her hands up. "I don't know what it is ... old age!"

They led me into the kitchen. Canned soup dripped where it spilled over the stove.

Paul's hands shook as he showed me the hole scorched in his shirt sleeve as he tried to cope with a meal. The flare-up, cut short by my arrival, had taken its toll. He put his hand to his forehead and sighed, gaining equilibrium. "It's just that she upsets me sometimes," he said, arranging the knives and forks on the table as I set out the lunch I had cooked.

Bertha still fretted to know where she had put the wooden spoon he no longer needed, and my heart ached for her.

Frailty of age, its irritability, frustrations, limitations and fears had been too much for them both that morning. Impassioned by their need, I reached for Bertha's trembling hand. "Could we sit down and pray?" I asked.

"Oh," Bertha exclaimed, "that's what we need more of."

Paul joined us in a chair beside the couch.

After I prayed for them I looked up. Gratitude and relief flooded their faces. All tension was gone. I hugged them both and delighted in the hugs I received in return.

"You are too good to us," Paul said, making his way to the dining room table and pulling out a chair for his wife.

No, I thought, God is too good to me. He allowed me to share this moment as He touched two people He loves very much. How blessed I was in the process. I wanted to be their friend, and He had given me the desire of my heart.

Chapter Two

SIT AROUND

* * *

Chip MacGregor

I suppose most people have dreams, but how many people actually turn their dreams into reality? Larry Walters is among the relatively few who have. His story is true, though you may find it hard to believe.

Larry was a truck driver, but his lifelong dream was to fly. When he graduated from high school, he joined the Air Force in hopes of becoming a pilot. Unfortunately, poor eyesight disqualified him. So when he finally left the service, he had to satisfy himself with watching others fly the fighter jets that crisscrossed the skies over his backyard. As he sat there in his lawn chair, he dreamed about the magic of flying.

Then one day, Larry Walters got an idea. He went down to the local army-navy surplus store and bought a tank of helium and forty-five weather balloons. These were not your brightly colored party balloons, these were heavy-duty spheres measuring more than four feet across when fully inflated.

Back in his yard, Larry used straps to attach the balloons to his lawn chair, the kind you might have in your own back yard. He anchored the chair to the bumper of his jeep and inflated the balloons with helium. Then he packed some sandwiches and drinks and loaded a BB gun, figuring he could pop a few of those balloons when it was time to return to earth.

His preparations complete, Larry Walters sat in his chair and cut the anchoring cord. His plan was to lazily float back down to terra firma. But things didn't quite work out that way.

When Larry cut the cord, he didn't float lazily up; he shot up as if fired from a cannon! Nor did he go up a couple hundred feet. He climbed and climbed until he finally leveled off at eleven thousand feet! At that height, he could hardly risk deflating any of the balloons, lest he unbalance the load and really experience flying! So he stayed up there, sailing around for fourteen hours, totally at a loss as to how to get down.

Eventually, Larry drifted into the approach corridor for Los Angeles International Airport. A Pan Am pilot radioed the tower about passing a guy in a lawn chair at eleven thousand feet with a gun in his lap. (Now there's a conversation I'd have given anything to have heard!)

LAX is right on the ocean, and you may know that at nightfall, the winds on the coast begin to change. So, as dusk fell, Larry began drifting out to sea. At that point, the Navy dispatched a helicopter to rescue him. But the rescue team had a hard time getting to him, because the draft from their propeller kept pushing his home-made contraption farther and farther away. Eventually they were able to hover over him and drop a rescue line with which they gradually hauled him back to earth.

As soon as Larry hit the ground he was arrested. But as he was being led away in handcuffs, a television reporter called out, "Mr. Walters, why'd you do it?" Larry stopped, eyed the man, then replied nonchalantly, "A man can't just sit around."

(Continues...)