Baseball in Heaven ?
Two old men have been best friends for years, and they both live to their early 90’s, when one of them suddenly falls deathly ill. His friend comes to visit him on his deathbed, and they’re reminiscing about their long friendship.
Then the dying man’s friend says, “Listen, when you die, do me a favor. I want to know if there’s baseball in heaven.”
The dying man said, “We’ve been friends for years—this I’ll do for you.” And then he died.
A couple days later, his surviving friend is sleeping when he hears his friend’s voice. The voice says, “I’ve got some good news and some bad news. The good news is that there’s baseball in heaven.”
“What’s the bad news?”
“You’re pitching on Wednesday.”
The Test
A young pastor, fresh out of seminary and new in town, entered a small “Mom and Pop” store. “Mom” was the only person there. The pastor ordered what he needed, chatted a bit, paid the lady, shoved his change into his pocket and left.
Later, when he took time to put the change into his wallet, he realized that the woman had given him more money than she should have. He looked at it awhile thinking about the situation. Should he take time out of his busy schedule ?to go back and return the extra money? Should he bother to rectify the situation at all? He recalled other occasions in his life when he’d been given back too little change. Wouldn’t it all even out if he just kept the money?
Heeding his conscience, he drove back to the store to make things right. “You gave me too much change,” he said to the woman.
“I know,” she replied, almost as though it didn’t matter.
“But you gave me $20.00 more than you should have.”
“I know,” she replied again.
“You knew that you gave me too much change?”
“Yes.”
“But why would you deliberately do that?” he asked.
Her eyes twinkled as she answered, “I know who you are and I know what you’re doing in town. I just wanted to see what you’d do if I gave you too much change. And you did the right thing.”