I once knew a guy who lived way out of town, and he had several acres out behind his house. Every evening he would take a bottle of bourbon and a glass, and sit out on his back porch for hours. He would take a sip of bourbon every now and then and just stare off into the distance. When friends and relatives asked him what he was doing just sitting there, sipping bourbon and staring, he said, "I've never known what I was really supposed to do with my life, so I'm waiting for a sign from God."

One evening a meteor struck a couple hundred yards away. It slammed him back against the door, blew out all the windows in the house, spilled his bourbon, and left his ears ringing for days. It also plowed a two-hundred foot crater in his back yard.

Now he just sits out on his back porch with his glass and bottle of bourbon and stares at the crater. When friends and relatives ask him what he's doing just sitting there, sipping bourbon and staring, he says, "I figure that had to have been a sign from God, and it was something pretty darned important, too. Now, if I can just figure out what God was trying to tell me to do. . . ."

Don Firth