WHY KEEP GOOD THOUGHTS A SECRET

(These One A Days are added to each day)

One summer, a young college student spent two and a half months working in a far western logging camp. When the superintendent had to leave camp for a few days, he was put in charge of a crew. But before the boss left the young man asked him, “What if the men refuse to follow my orders?” “Fire them!” he was told.

Immediately it was the young man’s plan to get rid of Tony the first time he gave him any trouble. That is until the superintendent continued, “I imagine you’re thinking of getting rid of Tony, if you get half a chance. I wouldn’t want that. I have been logging for 40 years and Tony is the most reliable worker I’ve ever had. I know he seems to do nothing but get on everybody’s nerves and is considered odd by some, but he comes to work first and leaves last. I’ve never had anyone so enthusiastic. And there hasn’t been an accident for eight years on the hills where he works."

The next day, when the young student began his reign as boss, the first thing he did was go to Tony. “Do you know I’m in charge here today?” Tony just stared and scowled. “I was going to fire you the first time you gave me any trouble, but I want you to know now that I’m not.”

And then he shared what the superintendent had said. When he finished, Tony dropped his axe and tears began to stream down his face. In his broken English Tony said, “Why he no tell me dat eight years ago?”

That day Tony worked harder than ever before – and he smiled! The next morning he told the temporary boss, “Last night, I tell Maria you the first foreman in deese country to do something but complain about me. The very first who ever say, ‘Good work, Tony,’ and it make Maria feel like Christmas.”

The young man went back to school after that summer and forgot about Tony. Then, twelve years later he met him again. He was now superintendent of railroad construction for one of the largest logging companies in the West. Rogers asked him how come he had moved to California and what had happened to him to have such success.

Tony replied, “If not for the way you talked to me that morning, I think maybe I would have killed myself one day. I mean, you gave me love when everyone else was giving me “no like.” Those few minutes changed my whole life.”

A minute. Have you got an agape minute to thank someone? To give them love rather than no like? To be patient with them even when you don’t feel patient toward them? To perhaps change their whole life? An agape minute to tell somebody what you sincerely like or appreciate about them? You say you’d have to look too hard and it wouldn’t be easy. Well, then look real hard even if it isn’t easy.

“Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking. It is not easily angered. It keeps no record of wrongs. ..1 Corinthians 13:4-8

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