A lady in a faded gingham dress and her husband, dressed in a homespun threadbare suit, stepped off the train in Boston , and walked timidly without an appointment into the outer office of the President of Harvard University.
The secretary could tell in a moment that such backwoods, plain-looking country hicks had no business at Harvard and probably didn't even deserve to be in Cambridge . 'We want to see the president,' the man said softly. 'He'll be busy all day,' the secretary snapped. 'We'll wait,' the lady replied.For hours the secretary ignored them, hoping that the couple would finally become discouraged and go away. They didn't and the secretary grew frustrated and finallydecided to disturb the president, even though it was a chore she always regretted.
'Maybe if you see them for a few minutes, they'll leave,' she said to him! (the president).
He sighed in exasperation and nodded. Someone of his importance obviously didn't have the time to waste , but he detested gingham dresses and homespun suits cluttering up his outer office.
The president, stern faced and with dignity, strutted toward the couple.The lady told him, 'We had a son who attended Harvard for one year. He loved Harvard. He was happy here. But about a year ago, he was accidentally killed. My husband and I would like to erect a memorial to him, somewhere on campus.'
The president wasn't touched.... He was shocked. 'Madam,' he said, gruffly, 'we can't put up a statue for every person who attended Harvard and died. If we did, this place would look like a cemetery.' 'Oh, no,' the lady explained quickly. 'We don't want to erect a statue. We thought we would like to give a building to Harvard.'
The president rolled his eyes. He glanced at the gingham dress and homespun suit, then exclaimed 'A building!, Do you have any earthly idea how much a building costs? We have over seven and a half million dollars in the physical buildings here at Harvard.'
For a moment the lady was silent. The president was pleased. Maybe he could get rid of them now. The lady turned to her husband and said quietly, 'Is that all it costs to start a university? Why don't we just start our own?' Her husband nodded.The president's face wilted in confusion and bewilderment.
Mr. and Mrs. Leland Stanford got up and walked away, traveling to Palo Alto, California where they established the university that bears their name, Stanford University, a memorial to a son that Harvard no longer cared about.
How often do we shun, deride or despise people just because they fall short of our transient material standards? How often do we ride rough-shod over people just because we think they have nobody or that they are not connected? And how often do we esteem people simply because of what we consider we may gain from them? You can often tell the character of people by how they treat those who they think are poor or powerless or can do nothing or are simply not politically connected.
Think on these things....
You never know who is on your way to change your world or impact on you positively. God transforms into man in different forms. It's only the meek that can spot him.
A man with one watch knows what time it is. A man with two watches is never sure.
REMEMBER MATHEW 5:5.
Friday, June 27, 2008
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