How long is your plan for?

If your plan is for a year plant rice
If your plan is for a decade plant trees
If your plan is for a lifetime, educate children.

(Confucius 551-479BC)

The question of a child

One Sunday I was entertained in a farm home of a member of a rural church. The intelligence and unusually good behavior of the only child in the home, a little four-year-old boy, impressed me.

Then I discovered one reason for the child's charm. The mother was at the kitchen sink, washing the intricate parts of the cream separator when the little boy came to her with a magazine.

"Mother," he asked, "what is this man in the picture doing?"

To my surprise she dried her hands, sat down on a chair, and taking the boy in her lap, she spent the next few minutes answering his questions.

After the child had left, I commented on her having interrupted her chores to answer the boy's question, saying, "Most mothers wouldn't have."

"I expect to be washing cream separators for the rest of my life," she told me, "but never again will my son ask me that question."

Alive in the earthquake

It's a fascinating story that comes out of the 1989 earthquake which almost flattened Armenia. This deadly tremor killed over 30,000 people in less than four minutes. In the midst of all the confusion of the earthquake, a father rushed to his son's school. When he arrived there he discovered the building was flat as a pancake. 

Standing there looking at what was left of the school, the father remembered a promise he made to his son, "No matter what, I'll always be there for you!" Tears began to fill his eyes. It looked like a hopeless situation, but he could not take his mind off his promise.

Remembering that his son's classroom was in the back right corner of the building, the father rushed there and started digging through the rubble. As he was digging other grieving parents arrived, clutching their hearts, saying: "My son! "My daughter!" They tried to pull him off of what was left of the school saying: "It's too late!" "They're dead!" "You can't help!" "Go home!" Even a police officer and a fire-fighter told him he should go home. To everyone who tried to stop him he said, "Are you going to help me now?" They did not answer him and he continued digging for his son stone by stone.

He needed to know for himself: "Is my boy alive or is he dead?" This man dug for eight hours and then twelve and then twenty-four and then thirty-six. Finally in the thirty-eighth hour, as he pulled back a boulder, he heard his son's voice. He screamed his son's name, "ARMAND!" and a voice answered him, "Dad?" It's me Dad!" Then the boy added these priceless words, "I told the other kids not to worry. I told 'em that if you were alive, you'd save me and when you saved me, they'd be saved. You promised that, Dad. 'No matter what,' you said, 'I'll always be there for you!' And here you are Dad. You kept your promise!"

Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen, "Chicken Soup for the Soul."