An eye witness account from New York City, on a cold day in December, some years ago: A little boy, about 10-years-old, was standing before a shoe store on the roadway, barefooted, peering through the window, and shivering with cold.
A lady approached the young boy and said, ‘My, but you’re in such deep thought staring in that window!’
‘I was asking God to give me a pair of shoes…
A young boy watched as his father walked into the living room…
The boy noticed that his younger brother, John, began to cower slightly as his father entered. The older boy sensed that John had done something wrong. Then he saw from a distance what his brother had done. The younger boy had opened his father’s brand new hymnal and scribbled all over the first page with a pen.
Staring at their father fearfully, both brothers…
The story is told of a woman who during the war went to live with her husband in camp on the Mojave Desert. She simply hated the place; the heat was almost unbearable, 125 degrees in the shade, the wind blew incessantly, and there was sand – sand everywhere.
Finally, in desperation she…
Catherine the Great received some boxes of freshly harvested oranges in the dead cold of winter. The note that came with it said they were from a distant port. The note said, ‘See what we are capable of bringing to you? We need your help to grow even more.’ Impressed, she sent a massive amount of money so that this port could develop further.
However, the oranges had been brought from other countries through the Black Sea. Without telling lies, the note to the empress did not…
Once a man had a dream in which his hands and feet and mouth and brain all began to rebel against his stomach.
You good-for-nothing sluggard! the hands said. We work all day long, sawing and hammering and lifting and carrying. By evening we’re covered with blisters and scratches, and our joints ache, and we’re covered with dirt. And meanwhile you just sit there, hogging all the food.
A Siberian shaman asked God to show him a man that He loved. The Lord advised him to look for a certain farmer.
“What do you do to make the Lord love you so much?” the shaman asked the farmer when he found him.
“I say His name in the morning. I work all day and say His name before going to sleep. That’s all,” the farmer replied.
I think I found the wrong man, thought the shaman….
One day, two flower merchants set up shop next to one another. They opened for business on the same day, carried the same lovely selection of aromatic flowers, and maintained similar prices for their marvelous plants. Both merchants took great care with raising their plants and both were kind and courteous to their customers. In fact, their stores appeared to be equal in every way.
At first, the merchants even received equal traffic through their shops, but – as time went on…
There was a king who had a daughter who was very ill. The doctors couldn’t find anything wrong with her. She just seemed miserable and cried often.
One night the princess dreamed that if she ate a pair of very special pears she would get well. In order to learn what would make the pears so special, she would have to meet with each person who brought pears to her.
Her mother the queen, decreed that…
When I began to study a spiritual form of Japanese flower-arranging called Ikebana-Sangetsu, I discovered I was slowly developing a deeper understanding of the connection between all life.
In our first class, my teacher said that flowers can actually talk, that they each have…
Long long time ago, a young scholar arranged to marry his lovely betrothed. Everything was well prepared on schedule. When the day came, the bride to be-she got married to someone else. He was fallen apart at the seams and very sick. His parents tried so hard to raise his spirit up. Watching their only son nearly at his last gasp, they felt so impotent.
By that time, a monk learned of the circumstance. He decided to…
