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OPPORTUNITY

A man was out walking in the desert when a voice said to him, "Pick up some pebbles and put them in your pocket, and tomorrow you will be both sorry and glad." The man obeyed. He stooped down and picked up a handful of peb­bles and put them in his pocket. The next morning he reached into his pocket and found diamonds and rubies and emeralds. And he was both glad and sorry. Glad that he had taken some—sorry that he hadn't taken more.

And so it is with life.

A man tells how in his boyhood days, he walked nearly seven hundred miles to see Niagara Falls. When he was about seven miles from the spot he thought he had heard what might be the thunder of the great cataract, and inquired of a man who was working on the roof if it were so. The man replied that it might be, but he could not say since he had never been there.

John Ruskin, shrewd observer of men's foibles as well as their greatness, once sadly commented, "I am not surprised at what men suffer, but I am surprised at what men miss."

"Plant a tree and it begins to grow; set a post and it decays. Which are we: tree or post?"—Source Unknown

Robert Schuller tells about a group of women who lived on the bayou who were complaining because they didn't live in the city and didn't have luxurious homes. One of the women was a positive thinker. She got so tired of the other complainers, the faultfinders, and the criticizers that she finally looked at them and said, "Look, you live on the bayou. The bayou flows into the ocean. You've got a boat. You can go anywhere from where you are."

PRS 4/88 OPPORTUNITY -1

OPPORTUNITY

Four things come not back-the spoken word, the sped arrow, the past life, and the neglected opportunity.—Arabian Proverb

A WISE MAN will make more opportunity than he finds.—Bacon

Recently I read about a young man in Pennsylvania who was interested in the oil business. He studied it inside and out, determined someday he would strike oil and become rich. He had a friend in Canada in the oil business and he contacted that friend saying, "I want to come and find my fortune in oil." The friend wrote back, suggesting he stay in Pennsylvania until he had learned all there was to know about oil. The young man studied more but soon impetuous­ly sold his farm for $833 and moved to Canada to work with his friend in the oil business. Shortly after he left the farm, the new owners were out checking the pastures. Out from under an old board came this awful gooey-looking junk into the cattle water. You guessed it. The young man went to Canada to find oil while one of the largest oil discoveries in America was discovered on his farm. A billion dollars of oil has been pumped from that $833 property.—Jim Bakker, EIGHT KEYS TO SUCCESS (Harrison, Ar: New Leaf Press, 1980).

When one door closes, another opens, but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the one that has opened for us.—Alexander Graham Bell

The unknown poet is right:

It's not what you'd do with a million

If riches should be your lot:

But what are you doing now

With the dollar and a quarter you've got!

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