Help is where you find it

Two old friends met one day after many years. One attended college and excelled in business degree programs, and had become very successful, but truth be told, things were going south for him of late. The other had also attended college but never had much ambition, from his friend's perspective, having graduated with average grades from a Bible college. He nonetheless showed every sign of success and "well-heeledness."

The formerly successful one, doing everything in his power to hide his bad run of luck, said, "So, you're looking great! Things are obviously going as well for you as they have for me! What's your secret? Frankly, I never thought you would amount to much, but I have to admit, I'm proven wrong."

"Well," said the allegedly unambitious one, "One day, after several false starts at finding my purpose in life, I foolishly decided to open the Bible at random, and drop my finger on a word. It was the word "oil." That seemed way too easy, so I tried again, and wound up on the exact same page, on the exact same word. So, after prayerful consideration, I came to believe it really was a sign from God, and invested everything I had -- which wasn't much, truthfully -- in oil, and boy, did the oil wells gush!

I invested in mutual funds, made a good living on the dividends, which enabled me to do a lot of God's work, but there came a day I knew God wanted me to do more with my money. So, again, I prayed fervently, then randomly opened my Bible, dropped my finger on a page and looked to find the word "gold." So, I invested in gold and those mines really produced, and you know what the price of gold has done the last few years. Now, I'm as rich as Rockefeller, and I've been able to fund missions abroad, orphanages in third-world countries, water treatment plants on the African and Asian inner continents, create youth programs in our own inner cities, and even helped my church build a beautiful new campus. I am truly blessed!"

The ersatz successful friend was mightily impressed. So this "bible" stuff really worked, hm? This had to be the answer to his financial problems, he decided. He'd employ his friend's "financial theory" and he, being so much smarter than this unambitious lout, would truly rake in a fortune!

So he rushed to his hotel, grabbed a Gideon Bible out of the desk drawer, closed his eyes, flipped open the book and dropped his finger on a page. He opened his eyes and his finger rested on these fateful words:

"Chapter Eleven."