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JACKIE ROBINSON was the first African American to play baseball in the major leagues. Breaking baseball’s color barrier, he faced hostile crowds in every stadium. While playing one day in his home stadium of Ebbets Field in Brooklyn, he committed an error. The fans began to jeer him. He stood at second base, humiliated, while the crowd booed. Then, without saying a word, shortstop Pee Wee Reese went over and stood next to Jackie. He put his arm around him and faced the crowd. Suddenly the fans grew quiet. Robinson later said that that arm around his shoulder saved his career.
Bruce Howell
Illus.: Wise Use of Tools
James S. Hewett tells of a neighbor he had who was trying to put a TV antenna on his roof, but was having a terrible time. Hewett decided to give him a hand. He went over and took with him his best tools and soon had the antenna up. His neighbor asked him what he made with such fancy tools. Hewett replied, “Friends, mostly.”
I am told about this newspaper in England giving a reward for the best definition of what is a friend?
Thousands answered, the winner?
"A FRIEND IS ONE THAT COMES WHEN EVERYONE ELSE GOES."
A HUNGRY ENEMY
A woman wrote to "Pulpit Helps" to explain a miraculous lesson her family experienced. During one of their family Bible readings as new Christians, they ran across the verse, "If your enemy is hungry, feed him" (Romans 12:20 RSV). She writes:
Ours sons, 7 and 10 at the time, were especially puzzled. "Why should you feed your enemy?" they wondered. My husband and I wondered too, but the only answer John could think of to give the boys was, "We’re supposed to because God says so." It never occurred to us that we would soon learn why.
Day after day John Jr. came home from school complaining about a classmate who sat behind him in 5th grade. "Bob keeps jabbing me when Miss Smith isn’t looking. One of these days, when we’re out on the play ground, I’m going to jab him back.
I was ready to go down to the school and jab Bob myself. Obviously the boy was a brat. Besides, why wasn’t Miss Smith doing a better job with her kids? I’d better give her an oral jab, too, at the same time!"
I was till fuming over this injustice to John Jr. when his 7 year old brother spoke up: "Maybe he should feed his enemy." The 3 of us were startled.
None of us was sure about this "enemy" business. It didn’t seem that an enemy would be in the 5th grade. An enemy was someone who was way off... well, somewhere.
We all looked at John. Since he was the head of the family , he should come up with the solution. But the only answer he could offer was the same one he had give before: "I guess we should because God said so."
"Well," I asked John Jr., "do you know what Bob likes to eat? If you’re going to feed him, you may as well get something he likes." "Jelly beans," he almost shouted, "Bob just loves jelly beans."
So we bought a bag of jelly beans for him to take to school the next day, and decided that the next time Bob jabbed John Jr., John was simply to turn around and deposit the bag on his "enemy’s" desk. We would see whether or not this enemy feeding worked.
The next afternoon, the boys rushed home from the school bus and Joh...
Our opinion of people depends less upon what we see in them than upon what they make us see in ourselves.
Sarah Grand.
Ron Otto writes, “During my scuba diving training, I asked what should be done if we see a shark. Should we try to stab it with our diving knife? The instructor said, "Don’t do that! You’ll only make him mad." Then with a smile he went on, "If you see a shark coming after you, take out your knife, and then cut your buddy and swim like crazy."
My wife, Darcy; and I were on a date, sitting in the corner of the restaurant waiting for our food. I took out my pen and started to mark lines on a paper napkin. When I was done, I had made an acceptable likeness of a casket. I slid it across the table.
Darcy peeked at it, then rolled her eyes. She knew I hadn’t been taking this milestone (the big forty) in my life as well as I should. But this time she had read my thinking wrong.
"How many people does it take to carry one of these?" She looked at me with whimsical eyes that said, "What is he up to now? But she gave the right answer. "Six."
"Darcy; if I died tomorrow, who would you ask to carry my casket?’ I had plenty of friends who I believed would be willing to help with this task, assuming there was nothing more pressing in their appointment book. But I didn’t want those types of people carrying me to my grave. I wanted People who would drop whatever they were doing in order to drop me. Our conversation reminded me I had some work to do in the area of committed friends.
I realize this could sound morbid, but I decided I needed to start grooming my pallbearers. Certainly not because I planned on needing them anytime soon. But they represent the people who have been with you through the best and the worst of times. It was obvious to me that if I wanted to have rich friendships I would have to be a loyal friend.
Grooming Your Pallbearers
Tim Kimmel - President of Generation Ministries
A newspaper held a competition to find out how people would describe friendship. The winning answer was, “A friend is someone who’s walking in when everyone else is walking out.”
You and I have a friend that will do that, a friend who will stick closer than a brother. Jesus said,
“Surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age" (Matthew 28:20...
A group of friends went deer hunting and paired off in twos for the day. That night one of the hunters returned alone, staggering under an eight-point buck.
"Where’s Harry?" he was asked.
"Harry had a stroke of some kind. He’s a couple of miles back up the trail."
"You left Harry laying there, and carried the deer back?"
"Well," said the hunter, "I figured no one was going to steal Harry."
A WW2 story tells of how some soldiers brought the body of a dead friend to a French Cemetary. The priest asked if the dead man had been a catholic, but they did not know. The priest said that the man could not be buried in the graveyard. They men took their friend and buried him outside the cemetery fence. The next day they came back to see if the grave was all right, and to their astonishment they could not find it. They were about to leave in confusion when the priest came out. He told them that he had been so troubled about the event that he arose early in the morning and moved the graveyard fence to include the grave of the soldier who had died.
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