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The Cure for Nerves

A lady who was troubled with her nerves went to a famous doctor about her condition. To her astonishment, he gave her his prescription: "Go home and read your Bible an hour a day, then come back to me a month from today."
At first, she was angry, but later decided that she felt so miserable that she was willing to try anything.
A month later she went back to the doctor a different person, and asked him how he knew that was just what she needed.
"Madam," he replied, pointing to a well-worn open Bible lying on his desk, "If I were to omit my daily reading of this Book, I would lose my greatest source of strength and skill."
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Faith is not a sense, nor sight, nor reason, but taking God at His word.

The Chicken
BY: GARY BARNES
SOURCE UNKNOWN

Once upon a time, there was a large mountainside, where an eagle's nest rested. The eagle's nest contained four eagle eggs. One day an earthquake rocked the mountain causing one of the eggs to roll down the mountain, to a chicken farm, located in the valley below. The chickens knew that they must protect and care for the eagle's egg, so an old hen volunteered to nurture and raise the large egg.

One day, the egg hatched and a beautiful eagle was born. Sadly, however, the eagle was raised to be a chicken. Soon, the eagle believed he was nothing more than a chicken. The eagle loved his home and family, but his spirit cried out for more. While playing a game on the farm one day, the eagle looked to the skies abouve and noticed a group of mighty eagles soaring in the skies. "Oh," the eagle cried, "I wish I could soar like those birds." The chickens roared with laughter, "You cannot soar with those birds. You are a chicken and chickens do not soar.

The eagle continued staring, at his real family up above, dreaming that he could be with them. Each time the eagle would let his dreams be known, he was told it couldn't be done. That is what the eagle learned to believe. The eagle, after tim, stopped dreaming and continued to live his life like a chicken. Finally, after a long life as a chicken, the eagle passsed away.

The moral of the story: You become what you believe you are; so if you ever dream to become an eagle follow your dreams, not the words of a chicken.
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Faith is not a sense, nor sight, nor reason, but taking God at His word.

The Lord's Baseball Game
AUTHOR:UNKNOWN

Bob and the Lord stood together, watching a baseball game. The Lord
's team was playing Satan's team. The Lord's team was at bat, the score was tied zero to zero, and it was the bottom of the 9th inning with two outs. Bob and the Lord continued to watch as the batter, Love, stepped up to the plate. Love swung at the first pitch and hit a single, because Love never fails. The next batter was named Faith, who also got a single because Faith works with Love. The next batter up was named Godly Wisdom. Satan wound up and threw the first pitch; Godly Wisdom looked it over and let it pass, because Godly Wisdom does not swing at Satan's pitches. Ball one. Three more pitches and Godly Wisdom walked, because Godly Wisdom never swings at Satan's throws. The bases were loaded.

The Lord then turned to Bob and told him He was now going to bring in His star player. Up to the plate stepped Grace. Bob made a face... Grace certainly didn't look like much to him! apparently Satan's whole team agreed: they all relaxed and laughed a little when they saw Grace. Thinking he had won the game, Satan wound up and fired his first pitch. To all but one's amazement, Grace hit the ball harder than anyone had ever seen. But Satan was not worried; his center fielder, the Prince of the air, let very few get by. He went up for the ball, but it went right through his glove, hit him on the head and sent him crashing to the ground; then it continued over the fence for a home run! And so the Lord's team won.

The Lord then asked Bob if he knew why Love, Faith, and Godly Wisdom could get on base but could not win the game by themselves. Bob, looking a bit sheepish, admitted that he didn't know. The Lord explained, "If your love, faith and wisdom could win the game, you would think you could win it by yourself. Love, faith and wisdom will get you on base, but only My Grace can get you home. My Grace is the one thing Satan cannot stop.
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Faith is not a sense, nor sight, nor reason, but taking God at His word.

A PENNY
Author, Unknown

Several years ago, a friend of mine and her husband were invited to spend the weekend at the husband's employer's home. My friend, Arlene, was nervous about the weekend. The boss was very wealthy, with a fine home on the waterway, and cars costing more than her house.

The first day and evening went well, and Arlene was delighted to have this rare glimpse into how the very wealthy live. The husband's employer was quite generous as a host, and took them to the finest restaurants. Arlene knew she would never have the opportunity to indulge in this kind of extravagance again, so she was enjoying herself immensely.

As the three of them were about to enter an exclusive restaurant that evening, the boss was walking slightly ahead of Arlene and her husband.

He stopped suddenly, looking down on the pavement for a long, silent moment. Arlene wondered if she was supposed to pass him. There was nothing on the ground except a single darkened penny that someone had dropped, and a few cigarette butts.

Still silent, the man reached down and picked up the penny. He held it up and smiled, then, put it in his pocket as if he had found a great treasure. How absurd! What need did this man have for a single penny? Why would he even take the time to stop and pick it up? Throughout dinner, the entire scene nagged at her.

Finally, she could stand it no longer. She causally mentioned that her daughter once had a coin collection, and asked if the penny he had found had been of some value.

A smile crept across the man's face as he reached into his pocket for the penny and held it out for her to see. She had seen many pennies before! What was the point of this?

"Look at it." He said. "Read what it says."

She read the words "United States of America."

"No, not that; read further."

"One cent?"

"No, keep reading."

"In God we Trust?"

"Yes."

"And?"

"And if I trust in God, the name of God is holy, even on a coin. Whenever I find a coin I see that inscription. It is written on every single United States coin, but we never seem to notice it! God drops a message right in front of me telling me to trust Him? Who am I to pass it by? When I see a coin, I pray, I stop to see if my trust IS in God at that moment. I pick the coin up as a response to God; that I do trust in Him. For a short time, at least, I cherish it as if it were gold. I think it is God's way of starting a conversation with me. Lucky for me, God is patient and pennies are plentiful!

When I was out shopping today, I found a penny on the sidewalk. I stopped and picked it up, and realized that I had been worrying and fretting im my mind about things I cannot change. I read the words, "I God We Trust," and had to laugh. Yes, God, I get the message. It seems that I have been finding an inordinate number of pennies in the last few months, but then, pennies are plentiful!

And, God is patient....

Have a blessed day!!

The best mathematical equation I have ever seen:

1 cross + 3 nails --------- 4 given
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Faith is not a sense, nor sight, nor reason, but taking God at His word.

Are You a Bucket-Filler or a Dipper?
AUTHOR:UNKNOWN

You have heard of the cup that overflowed. This is a story of a bucket that is like the cup, only larger, it is an invisible bucket. Everyone has one. It determines how we feel about ourselves, about others, and how we get along with people. Have you ever experienced a series of very favorable things which made you want to be good to people for a week? At that time, your bucket was full.

A bucket can be filled by a lot of things that happen. When a person speaks to you, recognizing you as a human being, your bucket is filled a little. Even more if he calls you by name, especially if it is the name you like to be called. If he compliments you on your dress or on a job well done, the level in your bucket goes up still higher. There must be a million ways to raise the level in another's bucket. Writing a friendly letter, remembering something that is special to him, knowing the names of his children, expressing sympathy for his loss, giving him a hand when his work is heavy, taking time for conversation, or, perhaps more important, listing to him.

When one's bucket is full of this emotional support, one can express warmth and friendliness to people. But, remember, this is a theory about a bucket and a dipper. Other people have dippers and they can get their dippers in your bucket. This, too, can be done in amillion ways.

Lets say I am at a dinner and inadvertently upset a glass of thick, sticky chocolate milk that spills over the table cloth, on a lady's skirt, down onto the carpet. I am embarrassed. "Bright Eyes" across the table says, "You upset that glass of chocolate milk." I made a mistake, I know I did, and then he told me about it! He got his dipper in my bucket! Think of the times a person makes a mistake, feels terrible about it, only to have someone tell him about the known mistake ("Red pencil" mentality!)

Buckets are filled and buckets are emptied? emptied many times because people don't really think about what they are doing. When a person's bucket is emptied, he is very different than when it is full. You say to a person whose bucket is empty, "That is a pretty tie you have," and he may reply in a very irritated, defensive manner.

Although there is a limit to such an analogy, there are people who seem to have holes in their buckets. When a person has a hole in his bucket, he irritates lots of people by trying to get his dipper in their buckets. This is when he really needs somebody to pour it in his bucket because he keeps losing.

The story of our lives is the interplay of the bucket and the dipper. Everyone has both. The unyielding secret of the bucket and the dipper is that when you fill another's bucket it does not take anything out of your own bucket. The level in our own bucket gets highter when we fill another's and, on the other hand, when we dip into another's bucket we do not fill our own ... we lose a little.

For a variety of reasons, people hesitate filling the bucket of another and consequently do not experience the fun, joy, happiness, fulfillment, and satisfaction connected with making another person happy. Some reasons for this hesitancy are that people think it sounds "fakey," or the other person will be suspicious of the motive, or it is "brown-nosing."

Therefore, let us put aside our dipper and resolve to touch someone's life in order to fill their bucket.
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Faith is not a sense, nor sight, nor reason, but taking God at His word.

A novel way to serve the hungry

Give Away The Farm
BY:RICK BERNSTEIN
FREELAND, MARYLAND

Now what, Dad?" My Daughter, Katie, asked. She was slumped behind a table laden with corn, green beans, tomatoes and lots---I mean lots---of zucchini. "For Sale: Fresh Garden Vegetables," read a hand-lettered sign. She and my boys, Gregory and Daniel, had spent the day flagging down cars in front of our semi-rural house outside Baltimore. Now the summer sun was setting, and they hadn't even made a dent in the vegetables that seemed to burst out of our quarter-acre garden. "We can't eat all this," Katie declared. "Do we just throw it away?"
Actually, I'd been asking myself that exact question long before my wife, Carol, and I got the idea to set the kids up with a roadside produce stand. You could say it was the question of my life. I worked downtown as an investment analyst for a bank. But what I really loved was farming. Maybe it was my ancestors, Polish farmers in New England's Connecticut River Valley. Maybe it was because I felt cooped up behind a desk. All I really wanted to do was get outside, get dirty and make things grow. Problem was, I had no farm, no real experience and I certainly didn't have the money---it takes millions---to buy the hundreds of acres of land and equipment required to turn a profit in today's corporate food economy. So I stuffed my dream down and indulged my farming fantasy by running a hand tiller through our garden.
Next morning, I loaded boxes of potatoes, beans and corn into the trunk and drove to work. A few months before, my office had organized a successful volunteer day at a Catholic homeless mission called Our Daily Bread. Maybe they'd want the vegetables. I pulled into an alley and knocked on the mission's back door. A man opened. "Can I help you?" he asked.
"Um, I've got some produce in my trunk," I said, realizing how strange that sounded. The man's face immediately brightened. "Fresh produce?" he asked.
I nodded. "From my garden."
He bustled past me to the trunk and ran his fingers through the green beans. "These are beautiful," he said. "I'm Raymond, one of the cooks here. Usually all we get are castoffs from supermarkets--not in the best shape. Our guest will love these."
I helped him carry boxes into the kitchen and again sensed what I'd felt my first time there--a bustling, pervading goodness. Volunteers from various churches were preparing food and talking. I heard laughter from the dining room. I wasn't a churchgoer, but this felt nothing like any church activity I could picture. I asked Raymond if I could come again with more. "We'll take anything you've got," he said.
The trips became part of my routine.
Their effect on me, though, was anything but. I had a great life--a wonderful wife, terrific kids, rewarding career -- but I felt something was missing. Seeking more, I picked up the Bible. Over the next year and a half, I read it twice through. I knew what was missing. God. I became a Christian, and my life, especially the garden and my love of farming, took on a whole new meaning. Jesus said, "For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat....I tell you the truth, whatever you did for the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me." Those words blew me away.
One night, unable to sleep, I nudged Carol. "What is it?" she mumbled.
"We're not doing enough," I said.
She sat up. "Meaning what?"
"Meaning, I'm wondering if we should take our savings and buy a small farm."
Carol was silent a long time. Then she looked at me. "If you really believe this is a call from God, I'm all in."
Our real-estate agent showed us a 42-acre farm in Freeland, Maryland, an expanse of rolling hills, beautiful fields, a spring-fed stream and a two-story farmhouse. The farm was almost 200 years old, its original owner, a man named George Hampsher, buried in a Baptist churchyard half a mile away. Carol pulled me aside on the porch and said, "This is the place!"
Our first season was a true adventure. We had little equipment and even less experience. But then I learned my mentor in a work-related leadership program in Baltimore was none other than the executive director of the Maryland Food Bank. He introduced us to the Mid-Atlantic Gleaning Network, where we met people like Gloria Luster, an elderly woman of modest means who helped bring fresh produce gleaned from farmers' fields to needy people. It turned out the church we joined, Hereford United Methodist, was full of people---even the pastor---who'd grown up on farms. And there were plenty of farmers in the surrounding area--one of suburban Baltimore's last holdouts against sprawl--to tap for advice and used equipment. One farmer joked he'd sell tickets to watch the city slickers flounder. But folks helped anyway; soon we'd cobbled together equipment and a group of dedicated volunteers, including a couple named Matt and Sandy Leininger, a retired firefighter who'd grown up nearby named Dan Millender and a retired trucker and farmer named Roger Thompson.
When it came time to harvest, Gloria Luster corralled cars full of west Baltimore people, and the food banks sent guests and church volunteers. Youth groups arrived from towns we hadn't heard of. The farm filled with scampering kids and sweating adults, everyone talking and laughing, digging potatoes, picking beans and loading trucks bound for food banks. Standing at the top of a rise, watching Dan, Roger, Matt and Sandy, Carol, the kids, I could hardly believe what had happened. God had taken my farming fantasy and turned it into something so unexpected.
That first year we planted just a couple acres. Two acres grew to four, then eight. This year, First Fruits Farm celebrates its fifth anniversary as a nonprofit. We've nearly doubled in size, cultivating more than 62 tillable acres. We've grown and given away over a million pounds of fresh produce in the last four seasons. I still commute to my investment firm for the income to support our farm. But the suit comes off the minute I get home. I pull on my jeans and, if it's cold, my coveralls, and head out to the barn. Maybe it's winter, and I repair equipment with Wes Krock, a commercial airline pilot who's become a fixture at the farm, often arranging his schedule around the crop cycle. Or it's spring, and I take over planting where Dan left off that afternoon. Or it's harvest, and I get a few rows done before Carol calls everyone to dinner. We never know quite who's going to be there till the food's served. We bow our heads and give thanks to God for his grace and many gifts. For the farm. For dreams come true. And for the deep, solid truth that giving is the greatest gift of all.
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Faith is not a sense, nor sight, nor reason, but taking God at His word.

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