PLEASING CHRIST
Several years ago a young minister was called to be the pastor of a rather large church. He was asked how he thought that he, a young man with little experience, would be able to please so many men and women. He replied, “I am not going there to please one thousand people, but to please One.”
POISE
Poise is the ability to be at ease inconspicuously.
POLICE
When Lyndon B. Johnson was president of the United States, he went to church one Sunday morning accompanied by the Secret Service and motorcycle police. After the service he was approached by a small boy who asked him, “Are you the guy who came with the police?”
He replied, “Yes, sonny, I am.”
“Well, you’d better duck out the back door,” the lad said, “they’re still out there waiting for you.”
—A. L. “Kirk” Kirkpatrick
POLITENESS
A man walked to a newsstand to buy a paper. He thanked the proprietor politely, but the proprietor didn’t even acknowledge his greeting. A friend observed, “He’s a sullen fellow.” The first man replied, “Oh, he’s that way every night.” His amazed friend asked, “Then why do you continue to be so polite to him?” Answered the man, “Why should I let him decide how I am going to act?”
—Leslie B. Flynn
POLITICS – ELECTIONS
A politician who had changed his views rather radically was congratulated by a colleague, who said, “I’m glad you’ve seen the light.”
“I didn’t see the light,” came the reply. “I felt the heat.”
The politician is my shepherd, I’m in want,
He maketh me to lie down on park benches
He leadeth me beside the still factories,
He disturbeth my soul.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of depression and recession,
I anticipate no recovery, for he is with me.
He prepareth a reduction in my salary in the presence of my enemies,
He anointed my small income with great losses.
My expenses runneth over.
Surely unemployment and poverty shall follow me all the days of my life
And I shall dwell in a mortgaged house forever.
Too bad the only people who know how to run the country are busy driving cabs and cutting hair.
—George Burns
At a college job fair, a man bumped into one of his school’s guidance counselors. “I can’t seem to find a career that intrigues me,” he said.
“What are your interests?” he asked.
“I like to take things apart,” the man said, “but I hate putting them back together.”
“Son,” replied the adviser, “you ought to consider politics.”
Political speeches are like the horns of a steer … a point here and a point there … with a lot of bull in between.
POPULATION
If all the people of the world were brought together into one place, they could stand, without touching anyone else, in less than two hundred square miles.
It took until 1820 for the world’s population to reach its first billion. It took one hundred years after that for a second billion (1930). A third billion came thirty-five years later (1965), a fourth billion sixteen years later (1981), and the world’s population reached five billion five years later (1986). In seventy years the world’s population, it is estimated, may reach sixteen billion.
POSITIVENESS
Some years ago a shoe manufacturer ran an ad on slippers. The headline under the picture of the slippers read: “Keeps feet from getting cold.” The ad was a flop. Then the ad manager changed the headline to read: “Keeps feet warm and comfortable.” Sales picked up immediately.
POSSESSIONS – MATERIALISM
In the David Livingstone museum near Glasgow, Scotland, there stands a stained-glass window given by the United Free Church of Scotland in 1932. Its inscription is taken from the pioneer missionary’s diary. It reads simply, “I will place no value on anything I have or possess, except in relation to the kingdom of Christ.”
—Edward L. Hayes
When we look at what we want and then compare it with what we have, we will be unhappy. When we think of what we deserve, rather than of what we have, we will thank God.
POTENTIAL
If we love people, we will see them as God intends them to be.
—Russian author
Antonio, a sculptor, chipped away at a stone and could do nothing with it. So he tossed it away. Later Michelangelo took it and carved one of the greatest statues of all times, the statue of David. He saw the potential in the stone.
Treat a man as he appears to be, and you make him worse. But treat a man as if he already were what he potentially could be, and you make him what he should be.
—Johann von Goethe
A rooster took his hens to see some ostrich eggs, and said, “I just want you to see what can be done.”
A woman was dusting an old marble stone continually in the workshop of Gutzon Borglum. Then one day the sculptor made a bust of Lincoln. The woman said, “Is that Mr. Lincoln?” “Yes.” “How did you know that Lincoln was in that piece of marble?”
Diamonds in the Rough
A diamond in the rough
is a diamond sure enough,
For, before it ever sparkled,
It was made of diamond stuff.
Of course, someone must find it
Or it never will be found;
And then, someone must grind it,
Or it never will be ground!
But when it’s found
And when it’s ground,
And when it’s burnished bright,
That diamond’s everlasting
Flashing out its radiant light.
O Christian, please whoe’er you be,
Don’t say you’ve done enough,
That worst man on the street may be
A diamond in the rough.
There is no greater burden than a potential.
—Charlie Brown
Treat a man as he appears to be, and you make him worse. But treat a man as if he already were what he potentially could be, and you make him what he should be.
POVERTY
In the October 14, 1980 issue of the Tyler Morning Telegraph was an article about Maddalena Borella, who lived in the village of Gorduno, Switzerland. Local children feared the eighty-eight-year-old Maddalena, and called her a witch. She never washed and never changed her clothes. She slept on a straw mat on the floor of a dirty, dilapidated hut. When she collapsed in the middle of the road one day, doctors said that she was weak because of malnutrition—she had been eating one meager meal per day. Maddalena was hospitalized, then placed in a home for the aged. She died shortly thereafter.
Officials sealed Maddalena’s hut, then began to search for her only relative, a nephew who was living in the United States. Once the nephew was located, the authorities inspected the aunt’s tiny home to see what, if anything, was of value. To their amazement they found a bank savings book showing that Maddalena had $312,000 in her account. They also found a key to a safety deposit box which, when opened, was discovered to hold gold coins worth one and a quarter million dollars!
—Don Anderson
It’s no disgrace to be poor, but it can be inconvenient.
—Danish proverb
Poverty is a state of mind often induced by looking at a neighbor’s new car.
Luigi Coneglio died after having lived seventy years in poverty. Most of these years he begged, and his outstretched hand became his trademark. Then they found his body in a filthy tenement after it had lain dead for three days amid dirty rags and papers yellowed with age.
Just another dead pauper it was thought. But in the attic of his squalid living quarters were forty-seven violins, one of them a costly Stradivarius.
POWER
Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.
Nothing will divide the church so much as the love of power.
—Chrysostom
Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
—Lord Acton in a letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton in 1887
When visiting the Niagara Falls, a man inquired of a bystander, “What’s that house down there?” “The powerhouse. From it wires go to all the houses giving them the needed electricity.” “Where does all that power come from?” “Well Lake Erie is 169 feet below Lake Ontario. The fall of the water provides the power. If they were the same level, there would be no power.”
PRACTICE
All good maxims have been written; it only remains to put them into practice.
—Blaise Pascal
Dallas Green, former manager of the New York Yankees, had this motto on the wall of the clubhouse at the winter training center in Fort Lauderdale, Florida: “The will to win is not worth a nickel unless you have the will to practice.”