Our little pet grooming and boarding business was recently approached by someone in the pet-sitting business who was closing up shop. They asked if they could send information about our boarding business to all their clients - they wanted to make sure their old clients had alternatives when they finally closed down.

    Now that was a very fair and reasonable thing to do. But the lady didn't offer to sell me the mailing list or offer to sell me the business, in fact. She was just closing down! She failed to realize that, although that mailing list was going to be useless to her, that it was very valuable to me.

    Not being one to spend money unnecessarily, I said I would happily provide her with enough of my brochures for her to send to all her customers. To satisfy my conscience a little, I offered to pay the postage, enabling her to send her closure notice without cost. That agreed, my brochures and check for the postage sat in our grooming salon and never was collected!

    The point of this story is to remind you that opportunity is all around. Winston Churchill is supposed to have remarked: People stumble over opportunity every day - the trouble is, most just get up, dust themselves off, and carry on as if nothing had happened!

    To drive the point home, let me tell you a little religious joke - nothing offensive, just the sort of joke your vicar would tell you---

  There was a valley with a river running through it. A peaceful town developed where the road crossed the river. Above the town, high in the valley, a huge hydro-electric dam had been built to supply electricity to a neighboring city. One day, engineers noticed a large crack in the dam and the river rising in its banks. They determined that the dam was about to break.
  By the time the police and fire department had started notifying the villagers, the river had burst its banks and was flooding some of the nearby homes. A rescue dinghy stopped at one house where a man was sitting on the window cill.

  "Quick!" they called, "Climb in the boat!"

  "No, thank you," he replied. "I put my faith in the Lord."

  Then, when the river had risen and the man was looking out of an upper window, a National Guard motor launch came along and tried to rescue him.

  "No, thank you," he said again. "I put my faith in the Lord."

  When the river had almost covered the house and the man was sitting on his roof, a helicopter came by.

  "Quick! Grab this rope," they called, "You only have a few minutes before the dam collapses!"

  He replied, "No, thank you. I put my faith in the Lord."

  Then there was a sound like thunder and a great bubbling mass of water engulfed him.

  When the man woke up, he was before God, ready for his final interview. The man looked at God and said, "What happened? I put my faith in you!"

  God shrugged and said, "I sent you a dinghy, I sent you a motor launch, I even sent you a helicopter. What did you want? A miracle? Do you think you deserved a miracle?"