Top Secret to Inner Peace and Joy - Experience Heaven on Earth

Spiritual Advantage with Sam Stone

One of the most fascinating stories ever told among engineers is about a transaction between Henry Ford and Charles Steinmetz. Steinmetz was a brilliant engineer born in Germany and escaped to the United States in 1888. General Electric discovered his talent and recruited him.

He was only four feet tall due to deformity, but people called him the “Little Giant” because of his outstanding inventions and scientific contributions to electrical engineering. He could listen to the sound of a complex machine and pinpoint the malfunctioning part. The story goes like this:

Henry Ford’s automobile manufacturing plant in Dearborn, Michigan, had a problem with its gigantic generator, but its engineers couldn’t figure out what was wrong with it. Henry Ford reached out to Charles Steinmetz at GE for help. Steinmetz came and asked for a notepad, a pen, and a cot to sleep on. He listened to the generator for two days and nights and scribbled computations on the notepad.

On the second night, he asked for a ladder, climbed up, made a chalk mark, and left a note asking the engineers to open the plate at the mark and replace sixteen windings from the field coil. They did, and the generator performed to perfection.

Henry Ford was thrilled because his factory could resume production and stop losing money. However, he was stunned when he received an invoice from GE for $10,000. You know, $10,000 in the early 1900s is a significant amount. I checked it out and found it could equal $500,000.

How could a simple chalk mark on the machine cost so much money? Ford admired Steinmetz’s talent but balked at the figure. He asked for an itemized bill.

Steinmetz itemized the bill the following:

Making chalk mark on generator: $1.

Knowing where to make the mark: $9,999.

Ford paid the bill. (End of the story.)

Even though $10,000 was significant, it’s nothing compared to the loss each day the factory was not running.

Would it be nice if someone could put the chalk mark in this broken world and show us exactly one thing we need to fix to restore a harmonious world? How about our own life? Would it be nice if someone could put a chalk mark on our life to show us one simple change we can make to make our life run smoothly?

The good news is that Jesus has put a chalk mark on our lives and shown us one thing we must change to find inner peace and joy. It’s a very simple change, but it may not be easy. Simple doesn’t mean easy, but it’s always good to know that we don’t have to make a complicated effort to find peace and joy.

Today, we will explore Jesus’ teaching of the top secret to inner peace and joy based on this week’s scripture lesson and discover how to live in heaven on earth. Let’s begin!