TURN BACK TO GOD

Do you know the legend of the Cherokee Indian youth’s rite of passage?

His dad takes him into the forest, blindfolded …and leaves him….alone. He is required to sit on a stump the whole night…and not take off the blindfold until the ray of sun shines through it. He is all by himself. He cannot cry out for help to anyone.

Once he survives the night..he is a MAN. He cannot tell the other boys of this experience. Each lad must come into his own manhood.

The boy was terrified… could hear all kinds of noise…Beasts were all around him. Maybe even some human would hurt him. The wind blew the grass and earth… And it shook his stump. But he sat stoically, never removing the blindfold. It would be the only way he could be a man.

Finally, after a horrific night..the sun appeared and he removed his blindfold. It was then that he saw his father..sitting on the stump next to him…at watch… the entire night.

We are never alone. Even when we do not know it, our Father is protecting us…He is sitting on the stump beside us. All we have to do is reach out to Him.

Michael 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, would reply, “If I were any better, I would be twins!”

He was a natural motivator. If an employee was having a bad day, Michael was there telling the employee how to look on the positive side of the situation.

Seeing this style really made me curious, so one day I went up to Michael and asked him, “I don’t get it! You can’t be a positive person all of the time. How do you do it?”

Michael 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 to be a victim or…I can choose to learn from it. I choose to learn from it. Every time someone comes to me complaining, I can choose to accept their complaining or… I can point out the positive side of life, choose the positive side of life.

“Yeah, right, it’s not that easy,” I protested. “Yes, it is,” Michael said. “Life is all about choices. When you cut 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 Michael said. Soon thereafter, 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.

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Several years later, I heard that Michael was involved in a serious accident, falling some 60 feet from a communications tower! After 18 hours of surgery and weeks of! intensive care, Michael was released from the hospital with rods placed in his back.

I saw Michael 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,” Michael 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.

Michael 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 Michael. “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.”

Michael 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.

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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.” After all today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday.

Enjoy each day, each breath and mostly — each and every friend.

There you have it, go ahead and make an intelligent choice. It will define your future!

Once upon a time a man called Nicholas lived in Patara, a town in the East. Because he was very fond of children and was kind and generous to them, they came to think of him as their dear friend and their beloved saint.

So it was that after a time the wonderful things he did were woven into a beautiful legend. You know that Santa means Saint and Claus stands for Nicholas, and that is how he came to be known as Santa Claus.

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In Santa Claus’s own town, Patara, lived a great lord who had three daughters. He was very poor, so poor that one day he was on the point of sending his daughters out to beg for food from his neighbors.

But it happened that Saint Nicholas not long before had come into a fortune, and as he loved giving to those in need, he no sooner heard of the trouble the poor lord was in than he made up his mind to help him secretly.

So he went to the nobleman’s house at night, and as the moon shone out from behind a cloud, he saw an open window into which he threw a bag of gold, and with this timely gift the father was able to provide for his eldest daughter so that she could be married. On another night Santa Claus set off with another bag of gold, and threw it in at the window, so the second daughter was provided for.

But by this time, the father had grown eager to discover who the mysterious visitor could be, and next night he kept on the lookout. Then for the third time Santa Claus came with a bag of gold upon his back and itched it in at the window. The old lord at once recognized his fellow townsman, and falling on his knees, cried out “Oh! Nicholas, servant of God, why seek to hide yourself?”

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Is it not wonderful to think that this was so long ago, sixteen hundred years, yet we still look for the secret coming of Santa Claus with his Christmas gifts?

At first he was said to come on his own birthday, which is early in December, but after awhile, as was very natural with Christmas so near, the night of his coming was moved on in the calendar, and now we hang up our stockings to receive his gifts on Christmas Eve. In some countries children still put their shoes by the fireside on his birthday.

In others they say it is the Christ-Kindlein or Christ Child who brings the gifts at Christmastime. But it is always a surprise visit, and though it has happened so many hundreds or times, the hanging up of the Christmas stocking is still as great a delight as ever.

******** Read the Story : The Christmas Stockings *******

There was a kindly nobleman whose wife had died of an illness leaving the nobleman and his three daughters in despair. After losing all his money in useless and bad inventions the family had to move into a peasant’s cottage, where the daughters did their own cooking, sewing and cleaning.

When it came time for the daughters to marry, the father became even more depressed as his daughters could not marry without dowries, money and property given to the new husband’s family.

One night after the daughters had washed out their clothing they hung their stockings over the fireplace to dry. That night Saint Nicholas, knowing the despair of the father, stopped by the nobleman’s house. Looking in the window Saint Nicholas saw that the family had gone to bed. He also noticed the daughters stockings. Inspiration struck Saint Nicholas and he took three small bags of gold from his pouch and threw them one by one down the chimney and they landed in the stockings.

The next morning when the daughters awoke they found their stockings contained enough gold for them to get married. The nobleman was able to see his three daughters marry and he lived a long and happy life.

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Because of this story, Children all over the world continue the tradition of hanging Christmas stockings. In some countries children have similar customs, in France the children place their shoes by the fireplace, a tradition dating back to when children wore wooden peasant shoes.

The stockings were hung by the chimney with care in hope that Saint Nicholas soon would be there.

In Holland the children fill their shoes with hay and a carrot for the horse of Sintirklass. I

n Hungary children shine their shoes before putting them near the door or a window sill.

******** Read The Story behind Santa Claus *******

One Christmas Eve the trees in a wood were very unhappy.
They wished very much to keep Christmas, but they did not know how to do so.

“We look so brown,” said one.

“And so bare,” said another.

“If we only had our pretty green summer dresses,” said a third, “then we should be decorated and could keep Christmas.”

“Hush, children, hush!” whispered North Wind in quite a gentle voice for such a rough fellow.
“Make haste and go to sleep.”

“Hush! children, hush!” softly murmured a sleepy little bird.
He was roosting on one of the branches of the unhappy trees.

So the trees dropped off to sleep, one by one, while a little star twinkled peacefully overhead.

But while they slept something happened.
And when the trees awoke they found that someone,
perhaps North Wind, had, during the night,
cast over each of them a lovely soft cloak of spotless feathery white.

“How beautiful we are!” said the trees.
“Now we can keep our Christmas!”

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Read the Story : The Room - Jesus and our Sins