Something Beautiful…
This story is a bit familiar to me, in a sense that we did the same (almost) in one of our recollections.. It’s just that ours was “face to face”… anyway, hope you guys would love this stroy, just as much as i loved it (much love to sandy yates)..
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One day a teacher asked her students to list the names of the other students in the room on two sheets of paper, leaving a space between each name.
Then she told them to think of the nicest thing they could say about each of their classmates and write it down.
It took the remainder of the class period to finish their assignment, and as the students left the room, each one handed in the papers.
That Saturday, the teacher wrote down the name of each student on a separate sheet of paper, and listed what everyone else had said about that individual.
On Monday she gave each student his or her list. Before long, the entire class was smiling. ‘Really?’ she heard whispered. ‘I never knew that I meant anything to anyone!’ and, ‘I didn’t know others liked me so much,’ were most of the comments.
No one ever mentioned those papers in class again. She never knew if they discussed them after class or with their parents, but it didn’t matter. The exercise had accomplished its purpose. The students were happy with themselves and one another. That group of students moved on.
Several years later, one of the students was killed inVietNam and his teacher attended the funeral of that special student. She had never seen a serviceman in a military coffin before. He looked so handsome, so mature.
The church was packed with his friends. One by one those who loved him took a last walk by the coffin. The teacher was the last one to bless the coffin.
As she stood there, one of the soldiers who acted as pallbearer came up to her. ‘Were you Mark’s math teacher?’ he asked. She nodded: ‘yes.’ Then he said: ‘Mark talked about you a lot.’
After the funeral, most of Mark’s former cl assmates went together to a luncheon. Mark’s mother and father were there, obviously waiting to speak with his teacher.
‘We want to show you something,’ his father said, taking a wallet out of his pocket ‘They found this on Mark when he was killed. We thought you might recognize it.’
Opening the billfold, he carefully removed two worn pieces of notebook paper that had obviously been taped, folded and refolded many times. The teacher knew without looking that the papers were the ones on which she had listed all the good things each of Mark’s classmates had said about him.
‘Thank you so much for doing that,’ Mark’s mother said. ‘As you can see, Mark treasured it.’
All of Mark’s former classmates started to gather around. Charlie smiled rather sheepishly and said, ‘I still have my list. It’s in the top drawer of my desk at home.’
Chuck’s wife said, ‘Chuck asked me to put his in our wedding album.’
‘I have mine too,’ Marilyn said. ‘It’s in my diary’
Then Vicki, another classmate, reached into her pocketbook, took out her wallet and showed her worn and frazzled list to the group. ‘I carry this with me at all times,’ Vicki said and without batting an eyelash, she continued: ‘I think we all saved our lists’
That’s when the teacher finally sat down and cried. She cried for Mark and for all his friends who would never see him again.
The density of people in society is so thick that we forget that life will end one day. And we don’t know when that one day will be.
So please, tell the people you love and care for, that they are special and important. Tell them, before it is too late.
And One Way To Accomplish This Is: Forward this message on. If you do not send it, you will have, once again passed up the wonderful opportunity to do something nice and beautiful.
If you’ve received this, it is because someone cares for you and it means there is probably at least someone for whom you care.
If you’re ‘too busy’ to take those few minutes right now to forward this message on, would this be the VERY first time you didn’t do that little thing that would make a difference in your relationships?
The more people that you send this to, the better you’ll be at reaching out to those you care about.
Remember, you reap what you sow. What you put into the lives of others comes back into your own.
Giving your All
“Give God what’s right — not what’s left.”
A friend of mine, Kuya Roy, posted a few beautiful one-liners on his blog, and this one’s my favorite.
Cause it’s true. I know am guilty, and am totally not qualified to talk about stuff like this - -cause you know, i have my own faults (many, for that matter)… but i just wanna share the quote with you, my dear reader, and hopefully it would hit you too.
Sometimes, we’re so busy with so many things… preoccupied with thoughts like we should be famous, we should be rich.. that we gotta earn more, more, more… so we could give everything to the people we love… but, what about God. Have we done enough, have we exerted ourselves enough to give everything to God.
Cause He gave everything to us.
So maybe, in our own little ways, let us all try to return back the favor…
… with love.
Fear and Courage
“What do you fear the most?”
“How do you conquer fear?”
These are two of the most common questions people usually ask each other… cause, maybe, we people are really not that strong, that we need to depend on others, that we hunger for something, maybe these are the reaasons why sometimes, we are afraid.
Like, hmmnn, Im usually terrified before conducting presentations, especially to “oldies”… but it’s part of my job so i need to conquer whatever negative vibes, nerves, am having and just go… but also, there are moments when I get anxious for no reason at all — which started about two years ago — and which, am still trying to conquer now.
So, the homily in tonight’s mass hit me hard… it’s about reasons to be courageous. Father Ryan said there are two kinds of fear — the normal and the abnormal. Normal, he said, is like when you go to the forest and you’re terrified of snakes. Abnormal would be staying in your room, and thinking there are snakes under the bed, and getting terrified. To me, it sounded like abnormal is imaginary — and that’s the fear that I have (which im trying to “zip”).
Father Ryan said that the Bible has 365 “Do not fear” passages… and then he went on with how to be courageous (words are mine, though, as I do not have photographic memory, hehe):
- Remove the guilt. Talk to counselors, pastors, elders to remove the baggage, or whatever it is that’s haunting you.
- Do not be afraid of those who could kill you physically. rather, be afraid of those who could kill your soul. Body’s just physical, what’s important is what’s within.
- Think of sin as a disease. The more we think of sin as a disease, the more we would stay away from it. Sinning hurts the body, the mind, and the spirit.
- We are more important than the sparrows. God loves us that He would never leave us. And though we are given the freedom to do the things we want, we should be responsible with our actions, and believe that God is with us, if we accept Him with all our hearts.
I’d like to end with the passage Father Ryan uttered during the homily, “If God is with me, who can be against me”… So just lean on God, and you will be protected, no matter what. 
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