The Bible
Illustration★★★★Dear Abby:
A young man from a famous family was about to graduate from high school. It was the custom in that affluent neighborhood for the parents to give the graduate an automobile. Bill and his father had spent months looking at cars, and the week before graduation they found the perfect car. Bill was certain that the car would be his on graduation night.
Imagine his disappointment when, on the eve of his graduation, Bill’s father handed him a gift-wrapped Bible! Bill was so angry, he threw the Bible down and stormed out of the house. He and his father never saw each other again. It was the news of his father’s death that brought Bill home again.
As he sat one night, going through his father’s possessions that he was to inherit, he came across the Bible his father had given him. He brushed away the dust and opened it to find a cashier’s check, dated the day of his graduation, in the exact amount of the car they had chosen together.
–Beckah Fink, quoted in Jack Canfield, Chicken Soup for the Christian Soul, (Health Communications, Inc, Deerfield Beach, FL, 1997) 154 [source: Dear Abby from Universal Press Syndicate]
Beckah Fink, Chicken Soup for the Christian Soul, 154.
The point
Compelling story of a father giving his son a Bible instead of a car for graduation; the son's estrangement ends when after his father's death he finds a cashier's check inside—God's gifts often exceed expectations.