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Thursday, March 1, 2012

Acts of Love


Other People’s Monkeys
Dr Kenneth Blanchard, co-author of One-Minute Manager, warns against helping people too much by caring for and feeding their monkeys! He means that it is not helpful to take on somebody else’s problems (monkeys) as that only burdens you until you yourself collapse under the weight of these problems.
So ‘helping’ people with problems is talking with them and showing how they can solve their problems. It is not helpful to remove their problems for them. 

Sacrificial Service

In Taiwan, the 68-year-old Gladys Aylward died as she lived — sacrificially. The London Evening Standard reported this event under the headline, “The Small Woman’s Last Sacrifice”, as she had become ill as a result of giving away most of her bedding.
One of the orphans she brought up on the Chinese mainland visited her just before Christmas and asked what the veteran missionary would like as a Christmas present. Gladys Aylward said that she would love to have a cotton quilt. This orphan later discovered that when the temperature dropped to 40 degrees below zero, Gladys had given away her extra blanket to an orphan and her mattress to her Chinese housemaid.
All her possessions in the world consisted of one worn-out blanket. She caught flu and a few days later died in her sleep of pneumonia.
April Fleming
In her mid-teens, April Fleming, an American schoolgirl, was dying of a blood disorder called polycythemia vera. In 1994, an American organization called Make-a-Wish Foundation asked April to make a wish which they would grant for her. To their surprise, instead of asking for a treat for herself, April asked the Foundation to buy Christmas presents for homeless children.
Around America, people heard of April’s wish, and sent gifts and donations which she used to make gift parcels for homeless people in Olympia, Washington. She died at the age of 17. Her wish was that “everyone practise a random act of kindness to help a fellow human being who is in need”.
The more we give, the more we get
When the millionaire Percy Ross was six, he went from house to house selling eggs. He refers to this experience as his first selling job. His father told him to give his customers an extra egg from time to time. He discovered that his customers reacted as if he had given them an extra dozen eggs. He never forgot the advice: always give to your customers.
Mutual Help
The human race would perish did they cease to aid each other. We cannot exist without mutual help. All therefore that need aid have a right to ask it of their fellow-men; and only one who has not the power to grant it can refuse it without guilt. ~ Walter Scott

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