TRUE "STARS" IN LIFE

I am an admirer of Ben Stein. He's a homely, short little guy in tennis shoes whose appearance hides the fact that he is also a world-class economist and a great writer with a fine mind. A favorite cousin sent me his last article of "Monday Night at Morton's," written for many years at Morton's Restaurant about the Hollywood stars he meets there.

Ben Stein says he realizes now that the stars for us to emulate are not those who recite someone else's lines in front of a camera for an eight-figure salary. True stars are the soldiers, airmen, sailors, nurses, firemen, cops, EMTs, teachers and all kinds of caregivers who put their lives on the line every day to help people who need it.

I dedicate today's WEEKLY MESSAGE to a friend named Ron and to all those others who Ben Stein's words describe so well:

"I came to realize that life lived to help others is the only one that matters. This is my highest and best use as a human. I can put it another way. Years ago, I realized I could never be as great an actor as Olivier or as good a comic as Steve Martin...or Martin Mull or Fred Willard--or as good an economist as Samuelson or Friedman or as good a writer as Fitzgerald. Or even remotely close to any of them.

"But I could be a devoted father to my son, husband to my wife and, above all, a good son to the parents who had done so much for me. This came to be my main task in life. I did it moderately well with my son, pretty well with my wife and well indeed with my parents (with my sister's help). I cared for and paid attention to them in their declining years. I stayed with my father as he got sick, went into extremis and then into a coma and then entered immortality with my sister and me reading him the Psalms.

"This was the only point at which my life touched the lives of the soldiers in Iraq or the firefighters in New York . I came to realize that life lived to help others is the only one that matters and that it is my duty, in return for the lavish life God has devolved upon me, to help others He has placed in my path. This is my highest and best use as a human.

"Faith is not believing that God can. It is knowing that God will."

Thanks, Ben, for telling us the truth for today.