Ecclesiastes 12:10

 Alonzo Decker was making hand drills for the US military during the Second World War. He noticed that the company kept receiving repeated replacement orders for more drills.  He could have been happy with the extra sales but he was worried that something was wrong with the drill causing it to fail with regularity. Rather than simply replace the drills, he asked why.   What he found wasn’t the drill were bad, but rather they were too good. It seems many of the women that were working in the factories were taking the drills home with them on the weekends to do home repairs and not bringing them back. Now he had a new potential market that might last longer than the war effort. His company Black & Decker started producing domestic power drills in 1946, in four years they were producing their millionth. This tool helped to set off the DIY trend that made his company billions. Had he replaced the drill for the military and not asked why he never would have found a potenti...

    Big-time athletes must have it made. With those mega salaries, even with short careers, they must be set for life.  Not really.  An article in Sports illustrated found that 70%of NFL and 60% of NBA are broke within five years of finishing their careers in the league. So, it must be the stars that make it big? Well, if you look at the NBA's wealthiest players you might think that with Michael Jordan and Magic Johnson in the top 5. That is until you run across Junior Bridgeman. I’m guessing you never heard of him. Bridgeman played 12 seasons in the NBA until 1987 when he made his max salary of $350,000. In his career, he made a few million total but that wasn’t what made him rich, it is what he did with it.   While he was still in the league, Bridgeman would work for a local Wendy’s franchise to learn the restaurant business. When he retired from the NBA he bought it. Then another and another. Then a Chili’s until he owned over 100 different restaurants. He ...

  In Acts 15 the church is in a crisis. Jewish Christian have been telling Gentile Christian that they must also keep the Old Law and old ways to be saved. This isn’t so but the leadership in the church knows that this issue is going away soon. That have to balance their response to keep Gentiles in right behavior without adding the burden of the Old Law to them.     Eventually, they write a letter outlining the principles they want the Gentiles to follow. To ensure the validity of the letter they send it with people on both sides of the issue, Paul and Barnabas, who were familiar to the Gentile Christian, and Judas and Silas well know men in the brotherhood.     This seems to settle down the problems and after they spend some time with Antioch they make plans to travel back home. Yet, an interesting note is found in Acts 15:34.   “But it seemed good to Silas to remain there.”   I wonder what caused that? It wouldn’t be the place yo...

  It all came down to a missed phone call.   Hulk Hogan, the famous wrestling star, missed a call from his agent about a possible endorsement deal.  Now the story has shifted over the years, but basically, his agent had set up some potential sponsorship on some kitchen items. These companies felt a celebrity name on their product could rocket them to success. Hulk favored a meatball maker but the agent had another product in mind.  So he rang up Hogan. But he never answered.   So the agent moved on to his next client to see if he wanted to put his name on a personal grilling machine. That client, ex-boxer George Forman, took the call and the offer.  Currently 100 million George Foreman Lean Mean Fat-Reducing Grilling Machines have now been sold worldwide. It is estimated that Forman has made over 500 million dollars from that deal, more than he made in his entire boxing career.  I bet the Hulk wishes he had answered his phone. ...