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Carol Bartz was the CEO (Chief Executive Officer) of Yahoo. In an interview while at a forum at Georgia State University she was asked what the best advice was she had been given.
She said it came from her grandmother, who raised her, on a farm in Minnesota. “I was in the machine shed with my brother. We heard a rattlesnake above us and ran for Grandma. She grabbed a shovel, knocked the snake out of the rafters and chopped its head off. Then she said, ‘You could have done that.’ And you know what? She was right.”
That got me to thinking about what I could have done. Several years ago while preaching for the Bristol Road church in Flint, Michigan, we had a school of preaching. One of our instructors taught Greek and I signed up to take the course. I went three days and quit. But I could have done that. Here are some ideas.
Read through the Bible (or New Testament) in a year. Recently while in Gatlinburg they had in their bulletin names of those who had already completed reading through the Bible. While in Gainesville, Florida I noticed on the board that 19 had completed reading through the Bible. You could do that.
Read a set of commentaries. A brother at the Jacksonville, Alabama congregation told me that within a year and a half after he obeyed the gospel he had read the complete set of New Testament Commentaries by Burton Coffman. Do you think he knew a little bit more about the Bible after that? You could do that.
Take up a service project. A good lady with whom I am acquainted bakes small pound cakes and gives to the sick. You could do that.
Send cards. I knew a lady confined to a wheelchair. She regularly sent cards of encouragement to the sick and shut in, elders and members who needed lifting up. You could do that.
Two men were sitting on a stump at the edge of the woods. One was a huge muscular guy the other much smaller. The small guy said to the large fellow, “If I were as big as you I would go into the woods and rip a big bear apart.” The big guy replied, “There are a lot of small bears in the woods.” You could do that.
Larry Acuff