im currently reading this really good book, "Like the FLowing River" by Paulo Coelho. it has many many short stories inside and each story has a learning point. each time i read a story, i learnt smthg. & the author is a Christian, so some of the short stories inside talks a lil bit of christianity. very good book (:

so far, there are a few stories that are my favourite, like "The Story of the Pencil" and "The Solitary Piece of Coal"

In "The Story of the Pencil", it teaches how we should learnt to be like a pencil. There are 5 qualities that a pencil has and that we should learnt to have too.

1st quality: Like a pencil, you are capable of great things, but you must never forget that a hand is guiding your steps. We call that hand God, and He always guides us according to His will.

2nd quality: Now and then, the pencil gets blunt and thus, needs a sharpener to do a little sharpening. That makes the pencil suffer a little, but afterwards, he's much sharper. So we too, must learn to bear certain pain and sorrows, because they will make you a better person.

3rd quality: The pencil always allows the eraser to rub out any mistakes. This means that correcting something that we did is not necessarily a bad thing; it helps to keep us on the road to justice.

4th quality: What really matters in a pencil is not it's wooden exterior, but the graphite inside. So always pay attention to what is happening inside you.

5th quality: A pencil always leave a mark. In just the same way, you should know that everything you do in life will leave a mark, so try to be conscious of that in your every action.

love this story a lot (:

the other story about "The Solitary Piece of Coal", is about that a man went to church every sunday, but soon realised that the priest seems to be always saying the same thing and so, stopped going to church. One day, the priest went to visit the man, both of them sat before a fireplace and the man tried to start a conversation, but after half an hour, he gave up trying as the priest remained quiet. Then, the priest got up from his seat and used a log to push away a piece of coal from the flame. Since there was not enough heat for the coal to continue burning, it began to cool. The man saw this and quickly pushed the coal back into the flame. The priest then got up again and said goodbye, & before he left he said to the man "However brightly a piece of coal may be burning, it will soon burnout if you remove it from the flames. However intelligent a man may be, he will soon loose his warmth and his flame if he distances himself from his fellow man. I'll see you at church next Sunday."