A little girl had been shopping with her Mom in Target. She must have been 6 years old, this beautiful red-haired, freckle faced image of innocence. It was pouring outside. The kind of rain that gushes over the top of rain gutters, so much in a hurry to hit the earth it has no time to flow down the spout. We all stood there under the awning and just inside the door of the Target.
We waited, some patiently, others irritated because nature messed up their hurried day. I am always mesmerized by rainfall. I got lost in the sound and sight of the heavens washing away the dirt and dust of the world. Memories of running, splashing so carefree as a child came pouring in as a welcome reprieve from the worries of my day.
The little voice was so sweet as it broke the hypnotic trance we were all caught in, “Mom, let’s run through the rain,” she said. “What?” Mom asked.
“Let’s run through the rain!” She repeated.
“No, honey. We’ll wait until it slows down a bit,” Mom replied.
This young child waited about another minute and repeated, “Mom, let’s run through the rain.”
“We’ll get soaked if we do,” Mom said.
“No, we won’t, Mom. That’s not what you said this morning,” the young girl said as she tugged at her Mom’s arm.
“This morning? When did I say we could run through the rain and not get wet?”
“Don’t you remember? When you were talking to Daddy about his cancer, you said, ‘If God can get us through this, he can get us through anything!'”
The entire crowd stopped dead silent. I swear you couldn’t hear anything but the rain. We all stood silently. No one came or left in the next few minutes. Mom paused and thought for a moment about what she would say. Now some would laugh it off and scold her for being silly. Some might even ignore what was said. But this was a moment of affirmation in a young child’s life. A time when innocent trust can be nurtured so that it will bloom into faith.
“Honey, you are absolutely right. Let’s run through the rain. If God let’s us get wet, well maybe we just needed washing,” Mom said.
Then off they ran. We all stood watching, smiling and laughing as they darted past the cars and yes, through the puddles. They held their shopping bags over their heads just in case. They got soaked. But they were followed by a few who screamed and laughed like children all the way to their cars.
And yes, I did. I ran. I got wet. I needed washing.
Circumstances or people can take away your material possessions, they can take away your money, and they can take away your health. But no one can ever take away your precious memories… So, don’t forget to make time and take opportunities to make memories everyday. To everything there is a season and a time to every purpose under heaven.
I hope you still take the time to run through the rain.
Billy was obsessed with tractors. He grew up on a farm and ever since the very first moment he laid eyes on a tractor, he thought they were the most beautiful things he’d ever seen. His parents would take him for rides through the fields on their tractor and started buying him toy tractors to play with. As he grew up, he drew pictures of tractors all the time, and collected photos of rare tractors to put up in his bedroom. He bought tractor magazines and joined the Tractor Fan club, and spent any spare pocket-money on building model tractors. He was the biggest fan of tractors the world had ever seen.
His parents worried a little as his obsession grew, but it didn’t seem to be harming anyone, so they let it run its course. “He’ll grow out of it in a year or two” they told each other. But he didn’t, and soon he had started school.
Billy was a gifted kid, but it soon became obvious that his obsession with tractors was making it hard for him to make friends. The few kids that tried to hang out with him got bored with talking about tractors, and it seemed like Billy talked of little else. Billy grew lonely and started to realize that his love of tractors might be better hidden from the world.
So when Billy started High School he thought of it as a fresh new start. He tried his best to keep his tractor love hidden from his schoolmates, and only indulged in his obsessive tractor fandom at home or reading tractor magazines in the school toilets. He got great marks and seemed especially gifted at mechanical subjects and agriculture, his knowledge of tractors and how they worked held him in good stead. In fact, Billy became quite popular, and made a lot of good friends, and he hardly talked about tractors with them at all.
At the beginning of 10th grade, Billy fell in love with a girl called Monica. Monica had beautiful dark brown hair and round braces that almost looked like little tractor wheels. Billy and Monica started holding hands and school, and then kissing occasionally between classes, and eventually Billy asked her to come over to his parent’s farm and meet his family.
So Monica came round one afternoon after school and met Billy’s lovely parents and had a lot of fun roaming around the farm. Billy could not have been happier and all was going well until Monica asked Billy to see his room. “I don’t think that’s a good idea” said Billy, but Monica only laughed and would not be swayed, and playfully she ran past Billy up the hall to his bedroom door and opened it.
As the door creaked open, Monica let out a horrible scream and after recoiling for a moment ran out of the house and all the way home. Inside the room was a vision of a madman. Tractors EVERYWHERE! From posters of tractors on every piece of wall to tractor quilts to thousands of model tractors on every available surface, the room was too much for Monica to deal with. She was absolutely freaked out.
Billy was distraught. He cried and cried and cursed his love of tractors. He flew into a rage, realizing that his obsession with tractors had to stop. He pulled down the tractor posters, and broke apart his tractor shaped bed. He piled them outside with his tractor toys and models, his tractor magazines and books, his Tractor Fan club membership card and his used tractor parts. He flew around the room gathering every last tractor related item until the room was nearly bare and then when it was all on the huge pile outside, he lit it all on fire. His parents came out and put a hand on his shoulder as he watched it burn, they knew it was good for him.
Billy went back to school, and although Monica would not talk to him, he was able to move on with his life. He soon graduated and went to college, deciding to study Finance, about as un-tractor like a subject as possible. Still, sometimes he daydreamed and had to force himself not to draw tractors absent-mindedly in the margins of his books.
It worked. By his second year of college, Billy was entirely normal, and had even met a wonderful girl called Chloe. He had met Chloe through his new best friend Steve, who was training to be a chef, and soon Billy and Chloe were dating.
Billy and Chloe would go on double dates with Steve and his girlfriend Alison, and eventually started going travelling too. They were very much in love. In fact, they were so in love that 6 months later, after returning from a trip to Japan, Billy proposed to Chloe at the new restaurant Steve had just opened. And like that, they were engaged to be married.
Chloe came from a wealthy family, and as soon as her parents heard the news, they insisted on a huge white wedding. They hired a beautiful white-painted hall, and Chloe’s mom became involved in picking every single thing for the wedding, from white tablecloths to a huge, towering white cake. And of course, most important, a beautiful flowing white wedding dress.
Billy’s parents were a little overwhelmed by the excess, being used to their humble farm. But Billy was a wonderful son and kept them looked after during the long preparations and rehearsals. Steve’s restaurant was being very successful, so Billy got him to cater the wedding feast and before anyone knew it the day of the wedding was upon them.
There was a huge hustle and bustle of frantic activity on the morning of the special day, and all seemed to be going perfectly. Unfortunately, Steve’s girlfriend Alison had chosen that morning to break up with him, and he was distraught. And yet, he knew he must pull it together if he was to cook the feast for his best friend’s wedding. But he was in such a bad way that he started drinking from the cooking sherry and had soon drunk enough that he passed out in the kitchen. But the stove top had been left on and soon all the food was burning, and a fire started blazing.
It was only an hour out from the wedding, and everyone was so busy with their wedding tasks that it took them some minutes to notice. But with a shout from a groomsman, everyone saw the fire and rushed to save Steve from inside the kitchen. Smoke and ash billowed out through the door and into the hall. Billy and his friends quickly managed to put out the fire, but when the danger was gone, Billy walked out into a hall that had become a disaster zone. Soot covered all the beautiful white tablecloths, and the hall was full of smoke. Chloe’s mum was in hysterics, screaming that the wedding was ruined and Chloe herself, the beautiful bride, was crying uncontrollably in a beautiful white wedding dress covered in ash. Billy looked around the hall and knew he had to do something.
“I can fix this!” he yelled. Everyone stopped their shouting and watched as Billy, the soon-to-be groom, strode over and opened the biggest window. ‘There’s only one thing for it’ he thought to himself.
He opened his mouth as wide as it could go and started sucking up all the smoke. Whoosh, it was sucked into his lungs, and he went to the window and blew it all back out into the world. Again and again, Wooooosh, Billy sucked up all the smoke and the soot from the perfectly white tablecloths. Whoosh, he sucked up the ash from on the cake and all the smoke left in the hall and blew it out into the air out the window. Finally, as the rest of the wedding party looked on incredulously, mouths agape, he went over to his Chloe and whoosh sucked up all the ash from her wedding dress.
After one final trip to the window to blow the last smoke and soot out into the outside air, Billy turned to see the hall sparkling and white. The wedding was saved! But the wedding party were astonished. Chloe’s mum was looking faint, and his parents were astounded by their son. But Billy only had eyes for his future wife, and he walked over to where she was standing with a very confused look on her face.
“Billy, how the hell did you do that?” she asked, shocked.
Billy got down on one knee, and looking up as his love, he said “Chloe, there’s something about me, you should know. I’m an extractor fan.”
A little boy came up to his mother in the kitchen one evening while she was fixing supper, and he handed her a piece of paper that he had been writing on. After his mom dried her hands on an apron, she read it, and this is what it said:
For cutting the grass: $5.00
For cleaning up my room this week: $1.00
For going to the store for you: .50
Baby-sitting my kid brother while you went shopping: .25
Taking out the garbage: $1.00
For getting a good report card: $5.00
For cleaning up and raking the yard: $2.00
Total owed: $14.75
Well, his mother looked at him standing there, and the boy could see the memories flashing through her mind. She picked up the pen, turned over the paper he’d written on, and this is what she wrote:
“For the nine months I carried you while you grew inside me: No Charge.
For all the nights that I’ve sat up with you, doctored and prayed for you: No Charge.
For all the trying times, and all the tears that you’ve caused through the years: No Charge.
For all the nights that were filled with dread, and for the worries I knew were ahead: No Charge.
For the toys, food, clothes, and even wiping your nose: No Charge.
When you add it up, Son, the cost of my love is: No Charge.”
When the boy finished reading what his mother had written, there were big tears in his eyes, and he looked straight up at his mother and said, “Mom, I sure do love you.”
And then he took the pen and in great big letters he wrote: “PAID IN FULL”.
A well-known speaker started his seminar by holding up a $20 bill in a room of 200 people.
He asked, “Who would like this $20 bill?”
Hands started going up.
He said, “I am going to give this $20 to one of you, but first, let me do this”, and he proceeded to crumple up the $20 dollar bill.
He then asked, “Who still wants it?”
Still the hands went up in the air.
“Well”, he replied, “What if I do this?” and he dropped it on the ground and started to grind it into the floor with his shoe. He picked it up, now crumpled and dirty.
“Now, who still wants it?”
Still the hands went into the air.
“How come you still want it?” he asked.
“It is still worth $20″, came the answer.
Crumpled $20 bill“Then, my friends, we have all learned a very valuable lesson”, said the speaker, “No matter what I did to the money, you still wanted it because it did not decrease in value. It is still worth $20.”
“Many times in our lives” he continued, “We are dropped, crumpled, and ground into the dirt by the decisions we make and the circumstances that come our way. We feel as though we are worthless. But no matter what has happened or what will happen, you will never lose your value. Dirty or clean, crumpled or finely creased, you are still priceless to those who love you. The worth of our lives comes not in what we do or who we know, but by who we are.”
In ancient times, a King had a boulder placed on a roadway. Then he hid himself and watched to see if anyone would remove the huge rock. Some of the king’s wealthiest merchants and courtiers came by and simply walked around it. Many loudly blamed the King for not keeping the roads clear, but none did anything about getting the stone out of the way.
Then a peasant came along carrying a load of vegetables. Upon approaching the boulder, the peasant laid down his burden and tried to move the stone to the side of the road. After much pushing and straining, he finally succeeded. After the peasant picked up his load of vegetables, he noticed a purse lying in the road where the boulder had been. The purse contained many gold coins and a note from the King indicating that the gold was for the person who removed the boulder from the roadway.
The peasant learned what many of us never understand. “Every obstacle presents an opportunity to improve our condition.”
