grandma's gold

I moved back to the farm this week. There’s just something about waking up here in the morning that makes all the difference. We’re going home in a week so I wanted to relive the good stuff while I know I still have time.
Grandma walked in last night on her way to bed looking at the books over my head, searching for something.
“What are you lookin’ for Grandma?”
“Well I need ‘G’…”
“G?”
“Oh no don’t worry about it, it’s just in my nightly reader they said something about gold and I wanted to look it up.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah, is it true that no matter how hot you get gold it doesn’t do anything to it? Is gold the only one that does that? With stands all that heat like that?”
“You know Grandma, I’m not sure but I think you’re right. It’s unique like that. Unaffected by time I suppose.”
“Hmmm…” she says as I watch her wheel still spinning.
“We need Pop here for this one,” I said. “I’m sure he’d know.”
“Yup,” Grandma says with a little smile coming across her face.
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She went on to get her nightly reader and show me what had made her start thinking about gold. It was this…

“Expose water to fire and it dissolves in vapor; wood, and it vanishes in smoke and flames, leaving but gray ashes behind; iron, and it is converted into rust; but fire may play on gold for a thousand years without depriving it of a degree or its luster or an atom of its weight.
Beautiful emblem of the servants of God! They, like gold, cannot perish, and their trials, like the action of fire on this precious metal, but purify what they cannot destroy.”

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Then she asked me if I gave this to her, but I hadn’t, so then she said I should read it. It was really good, and she gave me this to read on a single sheet of paper…

A Thanksgiving Perspective and Appreciation

One day a father of a very wealthy family took his son on a trip to the county with the firm purpose of showing his son how poor people live. They spent a couple of days and nights on the farm of what would be considered a very poor family. On their return from their trip, the father asked the son, “How was the trip?”

“It was great, Dad.”
“Did you see how poor people live?” the father asked.
“Oh yeah,” said the son.
“So, tell me, what did you learn from the trip?” asked the father.
“The son answered, “I saw that we have one dog and they had four. We have a pool that reaches to the middle of our garden and they have a creek that has no end. We have imported lanterns in our garden and they have the stars at night. Our patio reaches to the front yard and they have the whole horizon. We have a small piece of land to live on and they have fields that go beyond…our sight. We have servants who serve us, but they serve others. We buy our food, but they grow theirs. We have walls around our property to protect us, they have friends to protect them.”

The boy’s father was speechless.
Then his son added, “Thanks, Dad for showing me how poor we are.”

Isn’t perspective a wonderful thing? Makes you wonder what would happen if we all gave thanks for everything we have, instead of worrying about what we don’t have.

Appreciate every single thing you have, especially your friends!

“Life is too short and friends are too few.”