The Wolf in Sheep Skin

 

A wolf was walking in the countryside. He found a sheep-skin spread on the ground. He thought, "If I wear this skin and get mixed up in the flock, the shepherd will not suspect me. At night, I will kill a stout sheep and then take him away with me".

The wolf covered himself with the sheep-skin and got mixed up with a flock of sheep. As he had expected, the shepherd took him as a sheep and shut him also in the pen. The wolf was waiting for the night.

The shepherd had a feast that night. He sent a servant to fetch a fat sheep. The servant saw the sheep-skin covered wolf by chance. That night, the guests had the wolf for supper.

MORAL : Evil thoughts have evil ends.

The False Human Beliefs

As a man was passing the elephants, he suddenly stopped, confused by the fact that these huge creatures were being held by only a small rope tied to their front leg. No chains, no cages. It was obvious that the elephants could, at any time can break away from their bonds but for some reason, they did not.

He saw a trainer nearby and asked why these animals just stood there and made no attempt to get away. “Well,” trainer said, “when they are very young and much smaller we use the same size rope to tie them and, at that age, it’s enough to hold them. As they grow up, they are conditioned to believe they cannot break away. They believe the rope can still hold them, so they never try to break free.”

The man was amazed. These animals could at any time break free from their bonds but because they believed they couldn’t, they were stuck right where they were.

Like the elephants, how many of us go through life hanging onto a belief that we cannot do something, simply because we failed at it once before?

MORAL: Failure is a part of learning. We should never give up the struggle in life. You Fail not because you are destined to fail, but because there are lessons which you need to learn as you move on with your life.

Bad Temper

There once was a little boy who had a bad temper. His father gave him a bag of nails and told him that every time he lost his temper, he must hammer a nail into the back of the fence.

The first day, the boy had driven 37 nails into the fence. Over the next few weeks, as he learned to control his anger, the number of nails hammered daily gradually dwindled down. He discovered it was easier to hold his temper than to drive those nails into the fence.

Finally the day came when the boy didn't lose his temper at all. He told his father about it and the father suggested that the boy now pull out one nail for each day that he was able to hold his temper. The days passed and the boy was finally able to tell his father that all the nails were gone.

The father took his son by the hand and led him to the fence. He said, "You have done well, my son, but look at the holes in the fence. The fence will never be the same. When you say things in anger, they leave a scar just like this one. You can put a knife in a man and draw it out. It won't matter how many times you say I'm sorry. The wound is still there."

 

MORAL

A verbal wound is as bad as a physical one.

Best Mother On Earth - Think Positive

 

One day a mentally troubled child came home and gave a letter to his mother. He told her,

“My teacher gave this letter to me and told me to only give it to my mother.”

Reading through the letter, the mother could not believe her eyes. Gradually her eyes filled with tears.

"Mum is there a problem?

Did I do something wrong in school" the boy asked.

With a shaky voice, the mother slowly began to read the contents of the letter to her son.

“Your son is a genius. This school is too small for him and doesn’t have enough good teachers to train him. Please teach him yourself.”

The boy was dumbfounded.

The next morning, Nancy Edison pulled her son out of the school and from that day, began to teach him diligently at home.

Many years later, Thomas Edison had grown into the most prolific inventor of his time.

He had invented the electric light bulb, the first electric generator, the first record player (called the phonograph then), submarine radar, a cinema, and about one thousand other inventions that helped to usher in the modern age.

He was celebrated worldwide as the father of inventions.

Meanwhile, his mother had passed away quietly.

One day he was going through her closet and found the letter which was given to him by his teacher for his mother.

He remembered it was the same letter that made his mother pull him out of school and undertake many years of homeschooling.

So he opened it.

The message written in the letter was,

“Your son is mentally ill. We can not let him attend our school anymore. He is expelled.”

Thomas Edison then realized what his mother did, which probably saved his life and future.

For several hours he sat motionless with tears streaming down his face.

Finally, he gathered enough strength and wrote in his diary,

“Thomas Alva Edison was a mentally ill child whose mother turned him into the genius of the century.”

LESSON - A single word can make or destroy a child's future.

As parents, siblings, aunts, uncles, grandma and grandpa etc.) and teachers, we all have a role to play in building and activating the glorious destiny of children...

Be Inspired

Tell them positive things.

A Wise Old Owl

 

There was an old owl that lived in an oak. Everyday he saw incidents happening around him. Yesterday he saw a boy helping an old man to carry a heavy basket. Today he saw a girl shouting at her mother. The more he saw the less he spoke.

 

As he spoke less, he heard more. He heard people talking and telling stories. He heard a woman saying that an elephant jumped over a fence. He also heard a man saying that he had never made a mistake.

 

The old owl had seen and heard about what happened to people. Some became better and some became worse. But the old owl had become wiser each and every day.

 

Moral of the story :

You should be observant, talk less but listen more. This will make you a wise person.

A Moral Story : Honesty is The Best Policy.

 

A milkman became very wealthy through dishonest means. He had to cross a river daily to reach the city where his customers lived. He mixed the water of the river generously with the milk that he sold for a good profit. One day he went around collecting the dues in order to celebrate the wedding of his son. 

 

With the large amount thus collected he purchased plenty of rich clothes and glittering gold ornaments. But while crossing the river the boat capsized and all his costly purchases were swallowed by the river. The milk vendor was speechless with grief. At that time he heard a voice that came from the river, “Do not weep. What you have lost is only the illicit gains you earned through cheating your customers.

 

MORAL : Honest dealings are always supreme. Money earned by wrong methods will never

A Friend In Need Is A Friend Indeed

 

Mohan and Sohan were friends. They lived in a village. Once they made a plan to go to Varanasi. They passed through a forest. Wild animals lived in that forest.

 

On the way, they saw a bear. Sohan was selfish. He climbed up a tree to save his life. Mohan could not climb up the tree. He lay down on the ground. He held his breath. The bear smelt him and took him to be dead.

 

He went away. Sohan came down. He asked Mohan "What was the bear speaking in your ears?" Mohan replied, "He advised me to beware of those friends who run away in time of danger".

 

Moral: A friend in need is a friend indeed.

The Hidden Treasure

A farmer had five sons. They were all lazy. The farmer wanted to see them as hard-working young men. He was worried about their future. One day he fell ill. He was on his death-bed. He called his sons. He told them that there was a treasure hidden in his fields. He passed away the same day. 

The sons went to the fields. They dug up every inch of the fields. They did not find the hidden treasure. After a few days, it rained heavily. Someone advised them to sow seeds in the fields. They did the same. They got a good crop. They became rich. Now they understood the value of hard work. They got the hidden treasure from the fields in the form of good crops.

 

Moral: No pains no gains or work is its own reward

The Best Gift

 

There is a story of a man who visited an infirmed old lady who used to work for a very wealthy man.

As the visitor sat next to the lady's bed, a frame hanging on her wall caught his attention.

Looking closer, he exclaimed, "Do you know that this is actually the last will and testament of your employer? It names you as the sole beneficiary of all that he has!"

For 50 years--since the day her employer passed on--that poor lady had worked day and night eking out an existence for herself, when all of her previous employer's estate had been given to her to enjoy.

The story is a great reminder that you received the greatest gift of all - the Lord Jesus Christ.

So quit focusing on your failures, regrets, and fear of aging.
Focus on God by memorizing and meditating His words.

Life is short and might as well enjoy it.

Here's one of my favorite verse that you can memorize.

"Lord, remind me how brief my time on earth will be.
Remind me that my days are numbered--how fleeting my life is." - Psalm 39:4

This memory verse will help you to focus on what really matters in life.

The Folly of Imitation: Embracing One's Natural Abilities

Once upon a time, there was a hawk that resided atop a hill. At the bottom of the hill, a banyan tree stood, serving as a perch for a foolish crow. This crow had a peculiar habit of imitating others.

Every day, the hawk would descend from the hill in search of food. The crow observed the hawk, witnessing how it would circle in the sky for hours, then swiftly dive down to catch its prey. The hawk possessed keen eyesight, allowing it to spot its target from the hilltop before swooping down to seize it.

Watching the hawk, the crow thought to itself, "Ha! If the hawk can do it, so can I. What makes it so special? One day, I'll prove to the hawk that I can do the same." Fueled by misguided confidence, the crow made a plan.

A few days later, while the hawk was circling overhead, the crow decided to imitate its hunting technique. Just then, a baby rabbit emerged from the bushes. Both the hawk and the crow spotted the rabbit simultaneously.

Before the crow could make a move, the hawk swiftly descended, capturing the rabbit with its sharp talons, and disappeared into the sky with its prey. All the crow could hear was the whooshing sound as the hawk vanished. Filled with anger, the crow muttered, "That's not such a great skill after all."

In that moment, the crow noticed a plump mouse emerging from a hole. Without wasting a second, the crow attempted to imitate the hawk's hunting technique, swooping down to catch the mouse with its claws.

However, the mouse spotted the crow and swiftly evaded its grasp, causing the crow to crash into the hillside. In pain, the crow let out a cry of distress.

At that very moment, the hawk descended once again. "I hope you now understand that hunting is not easy, and neither is blindly imitating others," the hawk remarked before flying away.

From that day forward, the crow abandoned its habit of imitation and embraced its own natural abilities. It lived a content life, appreciating the unique gifts it had been bestowed with.

Shark Bait

 

During a research experiment a marine biologist placed a shark into a large holding tank and then released several small bait fish into the tank.

 

As you would expect, the shark quickly swam around the tank, attacked and ate the smaller fish.

The marine biologist then inserted a strong piece of clear fiberglass into the tank, creating two separate partitions. She then put the shark on one side of the fiberglass and a new set of bait fish on the other.

 

Again, the shark quickly attacked. This time, however, the shark slammed into the fiberglass divider and bounced off. Undeterred, the shark kept repeating this behavior every few minutes to no avail. Meanwhile, the bait fish swam around unharmed in the second partition. Eventually, about an hour into the experiment, the shark gave up.

 

This experiment was repeated several dozen times over the next few weeks. Each time, the shark got less aggressive and made fewer attempts to attack the bait fish, until eventually the shark got tired of hitting the fiberglass divider and simply stopped attacking altogether.

 

The marine biologist then removed the fiberglass divider, but the shark didn’t attack. The shark was trained to believe a barrier existed between it and the bait fish, so the bait fish swam wherever they wished, free from harm.

The moral: Many of us, after experiencing setbacks and failures, emotionally give up and stop trying. Like the shark in the story, we believe that because we were unsuccessful in the past, we will always be unsuccessful. In other words, we continue to see a barrier in our heads, even when no ‘real’ barrier exists between where we are and where we want to go.

The Story of a Wood Cutter

Once upon a time, a very strong woodcutter asked for a job in a timber merchant and he got it. The pay was really good and so was the work condition. For those reasons, the woodcutter was determined to do his best.

 

His boss gave him an axe and showed him the area where he supposed to work.

 

The first day, the woodcutter brought 18 trees.

 

“Congratulations,” the boss said. “Go on that way!”

 

Very motivated by the boss words, the woodcutter tried harder the next day, but he could only bring 15 trees. The third day he tried even harder, but he could only bring 10 trees. Day after day he was bringing less and less trees.

 

“I must be losing my strength”, the woodcutter thought. He went to the boss and apologized, saying that he could not understand what was going on.

 

“When was the last time you sharpened your axe?” the boss asked.

 

“Sharpen? I had no time to sharpen my axe. I have been very busy trying to cut trees…”

 

Reflection:

Our lives are like that. We sometimes get so busy that we don’t take time to sharpen the “axe”. In today’s world, it seems that everyone is busier than ever, but less happy that ever.

Why is that? Could it be that we have forgotten how to stay “sharp”? There’s nothing wrong with activity and hard work. But we should not get so busy that we neglect the truly important things in life, like our personal life, taking time to get close to our Creator, giving more time for our family, taking time to read etc.

 

We all need time to relax, to think and meditate, to learn and grow. If we don’t take the time to sharpen the “axe”, we will become dull and lose our effectiveness.