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A Visit From the Pastor

A member of a certain church, who previously had been attending services regularly, suddenly stopped coming to church. After a few weeks, the Pastor decided to visit. The Pastor found the man at home alone, sitting before a blazing fire.

Guessing the reason for his Pastor's visit, the man welcomed him, led him to a comfortable chair near the fireplace and waited. The pastor made himself at home but said nothing. In the grave silence, he contemplated the dance of the flames around the burning logs.

After some minutes, the Pastor took the fire tongs, carefully picked up a brightly burning ember and placed it to one side of the hearth all alone. Then he sat back in his chair, still silent. The host watched all this in quiet contemplation. As the one lone ember's flame flickered and diminished, there was a momentary glow and then its fire was no more. Soon it was cold and lifeless.

The Pastor glanced at his watch and realized it was time to leave, he slowly stood up, picked up the cold, dead ember and placed it back in the middle of the fire. Immediately it began to glow, once more with the light and warmth of the burning coals around it.

As the Pastor reached the door to leave, his host said with a tear running down his cheek, "Thank you so much for your visit and especially for the fiery sermon. I shall be back in church next Sunday." We live in a world today which tries to say too much with too little. Consequently, few listen.

Sometimes the best sermons are the ones left unspoken. What silent message would God have you share with someone today? "Let your light shine before men in such a way that they may see your good works and glorify your Father which is in heaven." -- Matthew 5:16

Gates and Friends Seek Knowledge

Wisdom, Fellowship, Youth

"He who walks with the wise grows wise,
but a companion of fools suffers harm." (Prov. 13:20; cr. P. 14:7, )

If your greatest concern each whether or not you are having a bad hair day, and you have no motivation to learn or better yourself, you might want to look around to see what kind of people you hang around.

I know, I know.  Some will argue, "My friends don't really influence me much."  But the Word of God says, "He who walks with the wise grows wise..."

So, what do wise people look like? Don?t be fooled.  Straight ?A? students are not necessarily wise.  Many ?A? students are in prison today.  Neither are slow students necessarily dumb.  Spielberg couldn?t get into film school because of his low grades. We?re talking about people who not only a thirst for learning, but can make the wise decisions that bring them success.

Bill Gates had a meteoric rise to the top of the computer industry. Now, according to God's Word, the people we choose to hang out with have an incredible influence on us.  What kind of people do you think Gates hung out with in school?  (Let them guess.) Through the 7th grade he was a problem student who seldom applied himself (Gates, pp 18-24) He was a nerd who wasn?t going anywhere. But in the eighth grade he found his niche with some high school math-science whiz kids who fell hopelessly in love with computer programming.

Who were these guys? Senior Harvey Motulsky wrote a "Monopoly" program and a program to would figure grade point averages from letter grades. Senior Math whiz Bob McCaw developed a black jack and roulette casino programs. Tenth-grade electronics expert Paul Allen had worked with robots with ultrasonic eyes. Ric Weiland had built a Tic-Tac-Toe computer out of surplus electrical parts. This was all while they were in high school! In light of the people he was hanging around, it was no wonder that as an eighth-grader he put together his first two programs, one to convert numbers from any one arithmetic base to another and an elaborate war game.

Never mind that the other students thought they were geeks. Working together and stimulating one another, they became geeks with a purpose, geeks with attitude. Gates and friends spent their free time learning computer languages and writing  programs.  His friend Paul Allen would become the co-founder and idea person behind Microsoft. Weiland was hired as one of the first Microsoft employees.  Their mentors were the quirky, eccentric, but cool programmers they hung around at the nearby "C-Cubed" corporation. You see, by walking with wise people, he became wise. (Stephen Manes and Paul Andrews, Gates: How Microsoft's Mogul Reinvented An Industry - And Made Himself The Richest Man in America, Simon & Schuster, New York, 1994, p. 23-28, 30, 32)

Bill Gates didn?t just learn programming on his own.  He was at a school where a small group became enamoured with programming. Paul Allen, two years older than Gates, was a friend and encouragement to him. (8,11) Paul taught him a lot about computer hardware and convinced him about the future of the microprocessor. (13) From the 8th to 11th grades, Gates' closest friend was fellow student Kent Evans. Whereas his other computer friends read journals such as Popular Electronics or Electronic News, Kent was more likely seen with Fortune, Business Week, or the Wall Street Journal. One teacher said he acted like a 40-year-old businessman. Kent was fearless, seeing no limits to what he could accomplish. Later in life, people would attribute these same qualities to Gates. He became one of the early influences on Gate's business savvy. Ric Weiland In order to get respect as 15- year olds, they called themselves the Lakeside Programmers Group and negotiated free computer time at the company Informational Sciences, Inc., by proving how well they could program. (Gates, p. 36, 40) Paul and Bill would later co-found MicroSoft and hire Ric as one of the earliest employees, brought on as general manager. No doubt Kent also would have been an early partner had he not died in a tragic mountaineering accident while in high school. See p. 96 - came on as general manager and programmer (Gates, p. 96).

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