There was a business executive who was deep in debt and
could see no way out.
Creditors were closing in on him. Suppliers were
demanding payment. He sat on the park bench, head in hands, wondering if
anything could save his company from bankruptcy.
Suddenly an old man appeared before him. “I can see that
something is troubling you,” he said.
After listening to the executive’s woes, the old man
said, “I believe I can help you.”
He asked the man his name, wrote out a check, and pushed
it into his hand saying, “Take this money. Meet me here exactly one year from
today, and you can pay me back at that time.”
Then he turned and disappeared as quickly as he had come.
The business executive saw in his hand a check for
$500,000, signed by John D. Rockefeller, then one of the richest men in the
world!
“I can erase my money worries in an instant!” he
realized. But instead, the executive decided to put the uncashed check in his
safe. Just knowing it was there might give him the strength to work out a way
to save his business, he thought.
With renewed optimism, he negotiated better deals and
extended terms of payment. He closed several big sales. Within a few months, he
was out of debt and making money once again.
Exactly one year later, he returned to the park with the
uncashed check. At the agreed-upon time, the old man appeared. But just as the executive
was about to hand back the check and share his success story, a nurse came
running up and grabbed the old man.
“I’m so glad I caught him!” she cried. “I hope he hasn’t
been bothering you. He’s always escaping from the rest home and telling people
he’s John D. Rockefeller.”
And she led the old man away by the arm.
The astonished executive just stood there, stunned. All
year long he’d been wheeling and dealing, buying and selling, convinced he had
half a million dollars behind him.
Suddenly, he realized that it wasn’t the money, real or
imagined, that had turned his life around. It was his newfound self-confidence
that gave him the power to achieve anything he went after.
Eleanor Roosevelt once said: You gain strength, courage,
and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the
face. You are able to say to yourself, 'I lived through this horror. I can take
the next thing that comes along.'
“For I know the plans I have for you," declares the
LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope
and a future.” (Jer 29:11)
