“Old Joe and the Carpenter” can be found in Doorways to the Soul: 52 Wisdom Tales from Around the World by Elisa Pearmain

The “traveling carpenter” was hired by Old Joe to build a fence between he and his neighbor’s property. But Joe returned home from his errands to find…

When he saw what the carpenter had built, he couldn’t speak. It wasn’t a fence. Instead, a beautiful footbridge, with handrails and all, reached from one side of the creek to the other.

Just then, Old Joe’s neighbor crossed the bridge, his hand stuck out, and said, “I’m right sorry about our misunderstanding, Joe. The calf is yours, I just want us to go on being good friends.”

“You keep the calf, ” said Old Joe. “I want us to be friends, too. The bridge was this young fellow’s idea. And I’m glad he did it.”

The carpenter hoisted his toolbox onto his shoulder and started to leave.

“Wait!” said Joe. “You’re a good man. My neighbor and I can keep you busy for weeks.”

The carpenter smiled and said, “I’d like to stay, but I can’t. I have more bridges to build.”

And he walked down the road, whistling a happy tune as he went.

—

“To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner was you.” Lewis B. Smedes

“Old Joe and the Carpenter” can be found in Doorways to the Soul: 52 Wisdom Tales from Around the World by Elisa Pearmain

Old Joe hired a carpenter to build a fence between he and his neighbor’s house. The carpenter goes to work.

The old man had to go to town for supplies, so he hitched up his wagon and left for the day. The young carpenter carried the lumber from the barn to creek side, and started to work.

He worked hard and he worked fast. He measured, sawed, and nailed those boards into place all day long without stopping for lunch. With the setting of the sun, he started to put away his tools. He had finished his project.

Old Joe pulled up his wagon full of supplies. when he saw what the carpenter had built, he couldn’t speak. It wasn’t a fence.

What did the carpenter make? “Find out next time!

Old Joe and the Carpenter” can be found in Doorways to the Soul: 52 Wisdom Tales from Around the World by Elisa Pearmain

An argument over a stray calf led to slammed doors and silence. Will Joe and his neighbor reconcile?

Come Saturday morning, Old Joe heard a knock on his front door. He wasn’t expecting anyone and was surprised to find a young man who called himself a “traveling carpenter” standing on his porch. He had a wooden toolbox at his feet, and there was kindness in his eyes.

“I’m looking for work,” he explained. “I’m good with mu hands and if you have a project or two, I’d like to help you out.”

Old Joe replied, “Yes, as a matter of fact. I do have a job for you. See that house over there. That’s my neighbor’s house. You see that creek running along our property line? That creek wasn’t there last week. He did it to spite me!

He hitched a plow to his tractor and dug that creek bed from the upper pond right down the proerty line. Then he flooded it! Now we’ve got this creek to separate us.

I’m so darn mad at him! I’ve got lumber in my barn, boards, posts and everything you’ll need to build me a fence–all along that creek. Then I won’t have to see his place no more. That’ll teach him!”

The carpenter smiled and said, “I’ll do a good job for you.”

What kind of a wall will the carpenter build? Come back next time to find out.

“Old Joe and the Carpenter” can be found in Doorways to the Soul: 52 Wisdom Tales from Around the World by Elisa Pearmain

Old Joe lived way out in the countryside all by himself. His best friend was also his closest neighbor. It seemed they had grown old together. Now that their spouses had passed on, and their children were raised and finally living lives of their own, all they had left were their farms–and each other.

But for the first time in their long friendship, they’d had a serious disagreement. It was a silly argument over a stray calf that neither of them really needed. The calf was found no the neighbor’s land and he claimed it as his own. Old Joe said, “No, no, now that calf has the same markings as one of my cows and I say it belongs to me!”

They were stubborn men, and neither would give in. Rather than hit each other, they just stopped talking and stomped off to their respective doors and slammed them shut! Two weeks went by without a word between them.

Will Joe and his neighbor reconcile? Come back to find out!

“Old Joe and the Carpenter” can be found in Doorways to the Soul: 52 Wisdom Tales from Around the World by Elisa Pearmain

Three old men, one of whom had a bad reputation, came one day to Abba Achilles.

The first old man asked him, “Father, make me a fishing net.”

“I will not make you one,” Abba replies.

Then the second said, “Of your charity make one, so that we have a souvenir of you in the monastery.”

But Achilles said, “I do not have time.”

Then the third one, who had the bad reputation, said, “Make me a fishing net, Father.”

Abba Achilles answered him at once, “For you, I will make one.”

Then the two other old men asked him privately, “Why did you not want to do what we asked you, but you promised to do what he asked?”

Abba Achilles gave them this answer: “I told you I would not make one, and you were not disappointed, since you thought that I had no time. But if I had not made one for him, he would have said, ‘The old man has heard about my sin, and that is why he does not want to make me anything,’ and so our relationship would have broken down. But now I have cheered his soul, so that he will not be overcome with grief.”

—

“How far you go in life depends on you being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving and tolerant of the weak and the strong. Because someday in life you will have been all of these.” George Washington Carver

It is said that a long time ago, a Buddhist master was teaching about enlightenment in ancient India, when his words were interrupted by the barking of a dog. The loud insistent barking so annoyed one man in the crowd that he threw a rock at the dog, striking him on the left side.

At that instant, the master fell to the ground and cried out in pain. Later, when his worried disciples asked what had happened, they saw that on the teacher’s left side there was a large bruise. The dog’s pain had so touched this teacher’s noble and tender heart that it became his pain. He took it on himself.

from Awakening the Buddha Within: Eight steps to Enlightenment by Lama     Surya Das

—

“To care for anyone else enough to make their problems one’s own, is ever the beginning of one’s real ethical development.” Felix Adler

Martin the Cobbler waited for Jesus all dau, but Jesus was a “no show,” or was he?

It was getting dark, Martin stepped inside his little shop, and lit the oil lamp. Martin sighed, “What a foolish man I was to think that Jesus would come dowm my little street here in the great city of Moscow.

Then from the shadows he saw the figures of old Stephanovich, the mother and her baby, and the old granny and the little boy step towards him. And he heard Jesus’ voice, like in the dream say, “Martin, Martin! Don’t you know me?”

“Who is it?” muttered Martin.

“It is I,” said Jesus.

—

“…whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.”  Matthew 26:40

Martin the Cobbler is a story by Leo Tolstoy

Martin the Cobbler is waiting for Jesus to visit him. So far a homeless man and a lost woman with a baby have come, but no Jesus.

All day long Martin kept peering up from his workbench and out the window, but he did not see Jesus.

Then he saw a boy steal an apple from the basket of an old woman who was hawking her fruit on the street. She grabbed the lad, and a struggle began.

Martin rushed out and separated the two. The boy denied stealing, but Martin said he had seen him steal the apple. Martin softly but firmly said, “Now you must ask Granny for forgiveness.”

The old woman threatened to turn the boy over to the police. She said the lad should be whipped. Martin said, “That is our way, but it is not God’s way.”

And then he began to tell her of Jesus’ parable of the man who forgave hiw servant a large debt. The woman and the boy stood there in the cold, listening to Martin’s every word.

Martin pulled a small coin from his pocket, paid the woman, and told the boy to take one of the apples to eat. The woman sighed, and began to carry her basket down the street.

The lad ran after her, and offered to carry her basket home fro her. And the two, old woman and young boy, began to talk with each other.

In his dream, Jesus tells Martin the Cobbler that he will pay Martin a visit the next day.

A heavy snow fell that night. In the morning Martin looked out the window and saw the old homeless man, Stepanovich, dressed in rags and shoveling snow. Martin invited him in, sat him down next to the stove, and poured him tea.

Martin talked about his dream, and his favorite stories from the Bible at great length. He gave Stephanovich more tea and some bread, and then wondered out loud if he, Martin, wasn’t a fool to expect to see Jesus on the streets of Moscow.

Stepanovich smiled, and said, “I don’t know about such things. But I know you have given me food and comfort for both body and soul.

After the old man left, Martin saw a young woman dressed in thin, worn clothes carrying a baby. She was a stranger and obviously lost. Martin pulled her inside and invited her to sit at his table. He gave her a bowl of soup and some dark bread. and while she ate, he soothed the baby, talking to the babe softly.

Then Martin told the woman about his dream. She shrugged her shoulders and said, “Who knows? All things are possible.”

Before she left, he wrapped her and the baby in a warm old cloak of his.

A homeless man and a lost woman with a baby, but so far, no Jesus. Will he show up? Come back next time to find out.

Martin the Cobbler is a story by Leo Tolstoy.

It’s smart to be generous, this story adapted from Leo Tolstoy tells us why.

There was once a man who lived in Moscow and made his living repairing old shoes. His name was Martin the Cobbler.

As he looked out the tiny window from his basement shop he could see the many different shoes of the hundreds of people who passed down the street daily. He knew them by their shoes, for he had repaired most of them, and Martin was known as a good and honest workman.

Martin the Cobbler was also a devout man who read and prayed the Scriptures when he was not repairing shoes. Once, when reading the Gospel he came across the passage, “Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty? When did we welcome you into our home and clothe your nakedness?”

Martin wondered, for he had never seen the Lord on the streets of Moscow. He wondered out loud, “What do our Lord’s shoes look like?”

That night, Jesus came to Martin in a dream saying he would visit him the next day.

Will Jesus pay Martin the promised visit? Come back next time and find out!

It’s smart not to give up. Here’s why.

It had been a long dry summer. No rain had fallen on the land and the rivers and streams had dried up and gone beneath the ground. The animals were thirsty. Two crows out in search of water spied a pitcher of water behind a house. They flew over the yard and landed on the pitcher’s brim. Peering into it, they saw water, but it was so low down that their beaks could not reach it.

Together the crows tried to tip the pitcher over, but it would not budge. They tried holding each other as they leaned over the side, but it was no use. It was too narrow to reach. “This is impossible,” cackled the first. “Let us not waste any more time.”

“Wait, friend,” said the second. “I know we will think of something if we try.” Not wanting to give up with water so nearby, the second crow sat and looked at the water and thought and thought.

Suddenly she cawed with delight and flew off a short distance to the road. There she picked up a pebble in her beak and flew back to the pitcher. She dropped it in, and a splash of water hit her face. “Look!” she said. “If we fill the pitcher with stones, the water will rise.”

“Oh, no,” said the first crow, “That’s hard work, and it will take all day. I’m going to go and find me a nice cool stream.” He flew off.

The second crow carried out her plan. She flew to the road again and again and dropped another pebble in, with the same reaction. Repeatedly she flew to the road and back until at last she had filled the bottom of the pitcher with stones. The water level rose and rose until finally when she threw in a pebble, it was not a drop of water that hit her beak, but the surface of the water itself. The crow had a nice long drink. As for her friend, he flew back later, tired and thirsty, to find his friend happy and refreshed.

You can eat and elephant one bite at a time.

Next time: Why It’s Smart to be Generous

Two frogs swimming in a pail of milk with no way out. One frog gives up and sinks, never to be seen again. What will the other frog do?

When the older frog sank to the bottom of the pail the younger frog cried with dismay, but there was nothing he could do. He could not hold the other frog up in the milk. But he did not give up. He just kept swimming.

The frog swam and swam, splashing his webbed feet around and around. After a while the frog made a game of swimming ten time around each way and then switching. “If I keep going something good will happen,” he kept telling himself. Hour after hour the tired frog swam in circles beating the cream.

All of a sudden, when his strength was nearly gone, his foot struck something solid. What was it? Was it the other frog? No, it was …butter! The frog had churned the milk into butter! He continued to swim and swim until the entire pail was full of firm white butter.

Then, with a tremendous burst of energy, the grog leapt from the pail onto the barn floor just as the farmer’s wife was returning.

“Oh what a day,” she muttered to herself. “It’s nearly noon and I haven’t even churned the butter.”

The little frog hopped away, happy to be alive, but sad that his friend had given up. Meanwhile the farmer’s wife go two surprises that day. Do you know what they were?

“Perseverance is the hard work you do after you get tired of doing the hard work you already did.” Newt Gingrich

“When the world says ‘Give up,’ Hope whispers, “Try it one more time.”