What Is Your Hand?

Billy Graham tells the story about a little child was playing with a very valuable vase. He put his hand into it and could not withdraw it.

His father too, tried his best to get it out, to no avail.

They were thinking of breaking the vase when the father said, "Now my son, make one more try. Open your hand and hold your fingers out straight as you see me doing, and then pull."

To their astonishment the little fellow said, "Oh no, dad, I couldn't put my fingers out like that because if I did I would drop my dime."

Smile, if you will but thousands of us are like that little boy, so busy holding on to the world's worthless dimes that we cannot accept liberation.

Drop the trifles in your life.Surrender! Let go, and let God have His way in your life.

How Rich Are You?

One day, a rich man took his son on a trip to the country side. He wanted to impress upon his son that earning money was the most important thing in life. 

His plan was to use the shock tactic. He wanted to show the young lad how poor and deprived a person in poverty could really be. 

For a few days, the father and son spent time on the farm with a poor farmer and his family. 

On the way home, the rich man asked, "Did you see what poverty is all about? What did you learn?".

The son contemplated for a while and said with the fullest sincerity, "Dad, thank you so much. I really learn something these few days."

"For example. we have only one dog, they have four."

"We have a swimming pool but they have rivers and streams to swim in."

"We have to switch on our lights at night but they have moon and stars that need no switches."

"We have to buy foods but they grow theirs."

"We take frozen foods out of our two fridges but they take fresh foods from their backyard and open fields."

"We have walls to protect us, they have friends."

"We have encyclopedias, they have Bible." 

"We have lawyers, they have God."

Then the lad concluded his observation, "Thanks dad for showing me how poor we are."

The father fainted. 

When Diamonds Lost Their Value

Aron Weingarten brings the yellow diamond up to the stainless steel jeweler's loupe he holds against his eye. We are in Antwerp, Belgium, in Weingarten's marbled and gilded living room on the edge of the city's gem district, the center of the diamond universe. 

Nearly 80 percent of the world's rough and polished diamonds move through the hands of Belgian gem traders like Weingarten, a dealer who wears the thick beard and black suit of the Hasidim.

David Clugston Yellow diamonds manufactured by Gemesis, the first company to market gem-quality synthetic stones. The largest grow to 3 carats.

"This is very rare stone," he says, almost to himself, in thickly accented English. "Yellow diamonds of this color are very hard to find. It is probably worth 10, maybe 15 thousand dollars."

"I have two more exactly like it in my pocket," I tell him.

He puts the diamond down and looks at me seriously for the first time. I place the other two stones on the table. They are all the same color and size. To find three nearly identical yellow diamonds is like flipping a coin 10,000 times and never seeing tails.

"These are cubic zirconium?" Weingarten says without much hope.

"No, they're real," I tell him. "But they were made by a machine in Florida for less than a hundred dollars."

Weingarten shifts uncomfortably in his chair and stares at the glittering gems on his dining room table. "Unless they can be detected," he says, "these stones will bankrupt the industry."

Ian White A microwave plasma tool at the Naval Research Lab, used to create diamonds for high-temperature semiconductor experiments.

Put pure carbon under enough heat and pressure - say, 2,200 degrees Fahrenheit and 50,000 atmospheres - and it will crystallize into the hardest material known. Those were the conditions that first forged diamonds deep in Earth's mantle 3.3 billion years ago. Replicating that environment in a lab isn't easy, but that hasn't kept dreamers from trying. Since the mid-19th century, dozens of these modern alchemists have been injured in accidents and explosions while attempting to manufacture diamonds.

Many people have placed great value in diamonds. Some of them are storing many of these hard carbons in the vaults. Imagine the disappointment when they discover that what they have deemed as valuable have become almost worthless. 

What are you placing your emphasis upon in this life? Are you seeking the eternal or just dabbling with the temporal things of life? The real treasures are found in heaven and nothing in this material world can even stand in comparison.

Adapted from an article by Joshua Davis

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.09/diamond.html