A confident young man walked into the captain's cabin of a Mississippi riverboat, and asked for a job as a wheelman. "What experience have you had on the river?" asked the captain. "Five years, sir." "Do you know the location of all the shoals and snags?" "No, sir, but I know where there ain't any, and that's where I calculate to steer." He got the job.

During the war, I was invited to the Panama Canal Zone where tens of thousands of troops were guarding that most important link in our communications. Our meetings were held in the baseball park, and thousands of people received blessing from God. A general in the United States Army came to me after one of the meetings and asked if there was anything that I would like to see or do while I was in the Zone. I told him that I wanted to see the working operation of the canal from the bridge of a ship. He whistled and made a gesture of doubt, telling me that only one civilian had gone through the canal since the beginning of the war and that he had been a brother of a cabinet member. But the general said he would try.

I often think of a certain cow I saw along the road in Texas. As we were driving by one of those ranches where they have 500,000 acres and very fine fences, a cow came through a hole in the fence. The cow wandered into the road; when it heard the engine of our car, it started to run. By the time we caught up to the cow, she was some 400 yards away from the hole in the fence, and still going. Finally we passed her. If that cow was ever going to get back into the field with those strong fences, she was going to have to go back to the place where she got out.

Every science has its own instrument. The geologist uses a hammer to take his samples from the rock. A biologist uses a microscope. An astronomer uses a telescope. You would laugh if a geologist left his work with rocks, and hammer in hand, and said: "I am tired of studying rocks. I am going to study astronomy." Not with a hammer!

A little girl acknowledged a gift from her aunt: "Thank you for your present. I have always wanted a pin cushion, but not very much." Many Christians act this way about the will of the Lord.