Tuesday, September 20, 2016

The Rewards of Studying

The other day at church I heard a story that I really liked. It was about scripture study but could really be applied to anything that requires hard work and diligence.
Now, I tried to look up the story the best I could on the information I had but I didn't have any luck so I don't know if this is a true story or not or who shared it. I didn't come up with it, I'm just retelling it. I added a title and names to the characters.

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The Book
Once in a time and place like this, there was a young man named Jeffery. Jeffery was a handsome young man who was unhappy. He used to regularly attend church meetings but as he grew older he went less and less and chose to read articles and news that cast bad light on his religion.
Jeffery fell into a spiritual and finical ditch. He needed money and the way he saw to get it was to spend time with his elderly Aunt Lise. 
Aunt Lise was wealthy and Jeffery planned to get a share of her money when she died. So on a regular basis, Jeffery went to visit his Aunt.
Besides being pretty well off, Aunt Lise was also an active church member. She went to church every Sunday and read in the scriptures every day. Over time, Aunt Lise's eyesight faded.
"Jeffery," She'd ask her nephew. "Will you read to me from the scriptures?"
"No, thanks," Jeffery would respond. He wanted nothing to do with church.
After a time, Aunt Lise passed away. Jeffery attended the reading of her will, eagerly awaiting the money.
You can imagine Jeffery's disappointment when, after all Aunt Lise's money had been given to charity, he was given her old set of scriptures and a letter.
Jeffery went home and read the letter.
"Dear Jeffery,
"If you read in the scriptures everyday you will be rewarded.
"Thank you for visiting with me, an old woman is thankful for the company.
"With all my love,
"Aunt Lise."
In complete disgust, Jeffery tossed the scriptures and letter into a corner of his room and forgot about them.
Weeks, months, and years passed and Jeffery grew older and the scriptures collected even more dust.
Then, one day, Jeffery, now an old man, passed away.
Because of all the debts he owned, all of Jeffery's stuff was auctioned off.
At the auction, the auctioneer picked up the old, dusty, beat up scriptures and read the letter to the audience.
"If you read these every day," The auctioneer promised. "You'll be rewarded."
A nice elderly woman bought the scriptures for a fair price and took it home. She looked over the book, wondering if the thing was still readable. She opened the scriptures and found, tucked carefully between each paper, a crisp $100 bill.

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There are several lessons we can take from this story. One moral is we will be rewarded if we study everyday. This story focuses on scriptures and those are important to study but we should also be gaining knowledge. If you want to be a doctor, for instance, you do a lot of studying and a lot of schooling to gain a degree. If you don't study, then you don't that degree.

Studying and diligence brings blessings.

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