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Megadog and Mustang
Pearl had the power of 5 different breeds. She was my Megadog. The Mustang was a 1971 convertible, white with a blue interior.
The car and the dog could not talk, of course, but speech is not required to show love.
Pearl and I found each other in the middle of nowhere, Oklahoma, when I was 8 years old. She had been abandoned by the side of the road and was starving. I was lonely and needed a friend.
When Pearl realized that she had been adopted, she became as mellow and contented as a dope-smoking hippie in a tie-dyed T-shirt. But Pearl was not a little yapper dog. If you acted as though you were going to attack me, that 16-pound dog would become a gigantic werewolf that could move at the speed of light.
Pearl followed the advice of E.W. Howe.
“When a friend is in trouble, don’t annoy him by asking if there is anything you can do. Think up something appropriate and do it.”
Speech is not required to show love.
Rachel Dawes was a childhood friend of Bruce Wayne in the 2005 movie, Batman Begins. She said to him,
“It’s not who you are inside, but what you do that defines you.”
Matthew records a parable by Jesus in which he makes a similar point:
“There was a man who had two sons. He went to the first and said, ‘Son, go and work today in the vineyard.’
‘I will not,’ he answered, but later he changed his mind and went.”
“Then the father went to the other son and said the same thing. He answered, ‘I will, sir,’ but he did not go.”
“Which of the two did what his father wanted?”
“The first,” they answered.
Speech is not required to show love.
Likewise, in the second chapter of James we read,
“If a person is without clothes and daily food, and you say to them, ‘Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,’ but do nothing about their physical needs, what good is that?”
My ’71 Mustang, like Pearl, was abandoned by the side of the road.
I left a note under the windshield wiper in 1991.
“Might this be a good time to sell this car? Give me a call and I’ll buy it where it sits.”
The man called me and I met him at the side of the road with the cash. He handed me the title to the car and asked, “Did you call a wrecker?”
“No,” I answered, “I’m hoping to drive it home.”
The man smiled and said, “Good luck,” as he drove away.
I then took the pliers out of my back pocket and quickly replaced the fuel filter. The car started immediately and I drove it home. The fuel filter on a Ford 302 engine of that era was notorious for getting clogged up, and this Mustang still had the original fuel filter. I was shocked that it had lasted 20 years.
I am going to tell you about that car, even though I know you won’t believe me.
It never had a flat.
It would perform as though it had 4-wheel drive if I needed to pull a friend’s car out of a ditch on an icy day.
The car would refuse to run out of gas unless I was within coasting distance of a gas station. And if it absolutely had to break down, it would wait until I was within coasting distance of an auto parts store that had exactly the part I needed. (The car knew, of course, that I already had the tools that I would need in the trunk.)
Speech is not required to show love.
You have people in your life that you love. I know you do. You know it, too.
Here are two other things that you already know.
- Talk is cheap.
- Actions speak louder than words.
I am not against words. In fact, I am in the word business. Banging words together is what I get paid to do.
And it is always a good thing to tell the people you love that you love them.
But it seems to me that we are becoming a nation of too many words and not enough action. We don’t want to become a nation of little yapper dogs, do we?
Social media is mostly, “yap-yap-yap-yap-yap.”
To which people reply, “yap-yap-yap-yap-yap.”
Love is not about what you say. Love is about what you do.
I think we have talked enough about it.
Now what are we going to do about it?
Speech is not required to show love.
Roy H. Williams
“As I grow older, I pay less attention to what men say. I just watch what they do.”
– Mae West
Marcy Syms became the youngest female president of a publicly traded company on the New York Stock Exchange in 1983. Her company sold brand-name fashions at discount prices, generating $350 million a year in stores across 13 states. Marcy’s father, Sy Syms, founded that company on an idea that quickly became an iconic slogan. “An educated consumer is our best customer.”
Faced with increased competition and a soft economy, the Syms stores closed in 2011 after more than 50 years. Listen in as Marcy Syms tells roving reporter Rotbart about the lessons she learned as the president of a big company. You will be delighted at what Marcy has to say about effective leadership, and surprised by its key characteristic. Listen and learn, learn, learn at MondayMorningRadio.com
