When things in life seem too much to handle, when 24 hours in a day are not enough, remember the mayonnaise jar and 2 cups of cocoa.
A professor stood before his philosophy class and had some items in front of him. When the class began, wordlessly, he picked up a very large and empty mayonnaise jar and proceeded to fill it with golf balls.
He then asked the students if the jar was full. They agreed that it was. The professor then picked up a box of pebbles and poured them into the jar. He shook the jar lightly. The pebbles rolled into the open areas between the golf balls. He then asked the students again if the jar was full, they agreed it was.
The professor next picked up a box of sand and poured it into the jar. Of course, the sand filled up everything else. He asked once more if the jar was full. The students responded with a unanimous yes.
The professor then produced two cups of cocoa from under the table and poured the entire contents into the jar, effectively filling the empty space between the sand. The students laughed. “Now,” the jar is full said the professor, as the laughter subsided, “I want you to recognize that this jar represents your life.
The golf balls are the important things – God, family, children, health, friends, and your favorite passions — things that if everything else was lost and only they remained, your life would still be full.
The pebbles are the other things that matter like your job, your house, and your car.
The sand is everything else — the small stuff.
If you put the sand into the jar first, “he continued, “there is no room for the pebbles or the golf balls. The same goes for life. If you spend all your time and energy on the small stuff, you will never have room for the things that are important to you. Pay attention to the things that are critical to your happiness. Play with your children. Take time to be healthy. Take your spouse out to dinner. Play another 18. There will always be time to clean the house and fix the disposal.” Take care of the golf balls first — the things that really matter. Set your priorities. The rest is just sand.”
One of the students raised her hand and inquired what the cocoa represented. The professor smiled. “I’m glad you asked. It just goes to show you that no matter how full your life may seem, there’s always room for a cup of cocoa with a friend.”
It’s Christmas! - Take time to visit your best friend, give a copy of this story with a can of hot cocoa mix – and two special mugs – reminisce old times!
Recently I was visiting a friend who has a greenhouse. As she showed me her flowers, we came to the most beautiful one of all, a golden chrysanthemum, bursting with blooms. But to my great surprise, it was growing in an old dented, rusty bucket.. I thought to myself, ‘If this were my plant, I’d put it in the loveliest container I had!’
My friend changed my mind. ‘I ran short of pots,’ she explained, and knowing how beautiful this one would be, I thought it wouldn’t mind starting out in this old pail. It’s just for a little while, till I can put it out in the garden.’
She must have wondered why I laughed so delightedly, but I was imagining just such a scene in heaven. ‘Here’s an especially beautiful one,’ God might have said when he came to the soul of the sweet old fisherman. He won’t mind starting in this small body.’
All this happened long ago — and now, in God’s garden, how tall this lovely soul must stand.
The LORD does not look at the things man looks at. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart.’ (1 Samuel 16:7)
Friendships are very special. They make you smile and encourage you to succeed. They lend an ear and they share a word of praise.
Four things you can’t recover
The stone……..after the throw. The word……..after it’s said.
The occasion………after it’s missed. The time……….after it’s gone
I guess the moral to the story – Don’t judge a book by its cover – Read the beginning of the story “The Fisherman”
I remember listening a couple of years ago to a National Public Radio news interview of a Haitian mother who explained to a reporter about the extreme unsanitary conditions she and her children were living in.
Rather than having a clean yard to play in, her children had to avoid sewage around their home and neighborhood.
She said to the reporter something like, “Could you live in a place like this?” I don’t remember the whole interview; it had a lot to do with political unrest. What I remember is her – concern for her children’s future – more immediately, their physical health.
It didn’t surprise me that for a couple of days after that I kept having the image in my head of wading through sewage while carrying my kids on my shoulders so they wouldn’t be affected by the refuse.
But the sewage I was wading through wasn’t the stuff that in our country we have the luxury of flushing, it was the crud we invite into our homes via our televisions and radios.
I’m guilty of this. Sometimes when the kids aren’t around, I’m not really on guard as far as the television content is concerned. I’m a grown-up, after all, I’m not a prude, what harm can be done?
Except that one night I noticed that the characters on a couple of the sitcoms I flipped through were going through bed partners as quickly as someone would a box of tissue. Then, not a few minutes later, a commercial aired for a genital herpes medication. Appropriate marketing, I thought.
Cleaning up the sewage starts with ME – the parent. I can be stunned by the pop-culture content, and I can gripe along with other parents about what our kids are faced with on a daily basis, but nothing gets done if I only examine the junk that’s lying around. I have to start removing it from my own life.
The Haitian mother I listened to will have to move to get away from her unsanitary living conditions. Every day they have to smell it and walk around it.
We can’t smell our cultural sewage, but if we open our eyes and ears we can certainly see and hear it — if we are willing to. We know this stuff isn’t good for us and our families. So why do we invite it it? I think it’s because we create an appetite for it, and in doing so we become complacent (after all, it’s just a show).
We have a lot of excuses for keeping our crud, don’t we? Unlike the Haitian mother, I don’t have to move. The only effort I have to make is moving my fingers to change a channel or hit an “OFF” button.
Let’s not ever get to a place in our society or our homes where we have to ask, “Could you live in a 
place like this?” (c) 2009 King Features Synd., Inc.
John is the kind of guy you love to hate. He is always in a good mood and always has something positive to say. When someone would ask him how he was doing, he would reply, ‘If I were any better, I would be twins!’
He was a natural motivator. If an employee was having a bad day, John was there telling the employee how to look on the positive side of the situation.
Seeing his style really made me curious, so one day I went up and asked him, ‘I don’t get it!’ ‘You can’t be a positive person all of the time. How do you do it?’ He replied, ‘Each morning I wake up and say to myself, you have two choices today. You can choose to be in a good mood or…you can choose to be in a bad mood – I choose to be in a good mood.’
Each time something bad happens, I can choose two paths, to be a victim or to learn from it. My choice is to learn from it. If you do not learn from history, it will repeat itself.
Every time someone comes to me complaining, I can choose to accept their complaining or…I can point out the positive side of life. I choose the positive side of life.
‘Yeah, right, it’s not that easy,’ I protested. ‘Yes, it is,’ he said. ‘Life is all about choices. When you clear away all the junk, every situation is a choice. You choose how you react to situations. You choose how people affect your mood. You choose to be in a good mood or bad mood.
The bottom line: It’s your choice how you live your life.’
I reflected on what he said. Soon hereafter, I left the Tower Industry to start my own business. We lost touch, but I often thought about him when I made a choice about life instead of reacting to it. Several years later, I heard that he was involved in a serious accident, falling some 60 feet from a communications tower. After 18 hours of surgery and weeks of intensive care, he was released from the hospital with rods placed in his back.
I saw him about six months after the accident. When I asked him how he was, he replied, ‘If I were any better, I’d be twins…Wanna see my scars?’ I declined to see his wounds, but I did ask him what had gone through his mind as the accident took place. ‘The first thing that went through my mind was the well-being of my soon-to-be born daughter,’ he replied. ‘Then, as I lay on the ground, I remembered that I had two choices: I could choose to live or…I could choose to die. I chose to live.’ ‘Weren’t you scared? Did you lose consciousness?’ I asked. He continued, ‘…the paramedics were great. They kept telling me I was going to be fine. But when they wheeled me into the ER and I saw the expressions on the faces of the doctors and nurses, I got really scared. In their eyes, I read ‘he’s a dead man’. I knew I needed to take action.’ ‘What did you do?’ I asked.
‘Well, there was a big burly nurse shouting questions at me,’ said John. ‘She asked if I was allergic to anything ‘Yes, I replied.’ The doctors and nurses stopped working as they waited for my reply. I took a deep breath and yelled, ‘Gravity”
Over their laughter, I told them, ‘I am choosing to live. Operate on me as if I am alive, not dead.’ He lived, thanks to the skill of his doctors, but also because of his amazing attitude…I learned from him that every day we have the choice to live fully.
Attitude, after all, is everything.
Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.’ Matthew 6:34. After all today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday.
Five Lessons to make you think about the way we treat people?
Always remember those who serve.
In the days when an ice cream sundae cost much less, a 10-year-old boy entered a hotel coffee shop and sat at a table. A waitress put a glass of water in front of him. ‘How much is an ice cream sundae?’ he asked. ‘Fifty cents,’ replied the waitress.
The little boy pulled is hand out of his pocket and studied the coins in it. ‘Well, how much is a plain vanilla ice cream?’ he inquired. By now more people were waiting for a table and the waitress was growing impatient. ‘Thirty-five cents,’ she brusquely replied.
The little boy again counted his coins. ‘I’ll have the plain vanilla ice cream,’ he said.
The waitress brought the ice cream, put the bill on the table and walked away. The boy finished the ice cream, paid the cashier and left. When the waitress came back, she began to cry as she wiped down the table. There, placed neatly beside the empty dish, were two nickels and five pennies.
You see, he couldn’t have the sundae, because he had to have enough left to leave her a tip.
For Lesson # 4 Overcome the obstacles in our path
A man found a cocoon of a butterfly. One day a small opening appeared. He sat and watched the butterfly for several hours as it struggled to force its body through that little hole. Then it seemed to stop making any progress. It appeared as if it had gotten as far as it had and it could go no further.
Then the man decided to help the butterfly, so he took a pair of scissors and snipped off the remaining bit of the cocoon. The butterfly then emerged easily. But it had a swollen body and small, shriveled wings. The man continued to watch the butterfly because he expected that, at any moment, the wings would enlarge and expand to be able to support the body, which would contract in time.
Neither happened! In fact, the butterfly spent the rest of its life crawling around with a swollen body and shriveled wings. It never was able to fly.
What the man in his kindness and haste did not understand was that the restricting cocoon, and the struggle required for the butterfly to get though the tiny opening, were God’s way of forcing fluid from the body of the butterfly into it wings, so that it would be ready for flight once it achieved its freedom from the cocoon.
Sometimes struggles are exactly what we need in our life. If God allowed us to go through our life without any obstacles, it would cripple us. We would not be as strong as what
we could have been. And we could never fly.