There were four college students at N State. All four of them had an A in Chemistry and the exam was coming up on Monday. And they got in this place of feeling very confident and knowing that they knew it all, and so rather than studying for the weekend they decided to go out and have a great big hearty party.

And so this is what they did, and coming back Monday they were way too late, they’re not prepared, so they’re thinking ‘OK well let’s go tell the professor we’re not going to take the exam today but we need to tell him something.’ And they said, “Well, we were spending the weekend visiting someone that needed our help and on the way back we had a flat tire.”

And the professor said you know, no problem. I’ll let you take it this afternoon, come back at 3 o’clock. And so all four guys show up promptly at three o’clock and he takes them each into a different room and they start the exam. And they look at the exam and for the first page it says, for 5 points – and it asked a certain question about chemistry and they thought ‘This is going well, no problem, we know this answer.’ Then they turn over to the second page, ‘for 95 points, which tire was it?’

The moral of the story is, 5 points in life is what we know, 95 points is what we do with what we know. Isn’t that the truth?

Many times people are looking for that spiritual enlightenment and they’re looking for that arrival place, that—“I’m at that destination now.” Where, spiritual wholeness is the acceptance that we’re learning each and every day. We get 5 points here, we have an awareness. We’re learning something new with a relationship, we have 5 more points and we have an awareness. What is that little statement on top of the refrigerator that says ‘It’s what I learned after I thought I knew it all that counted’?

For more inspiration and information: http://templehayes.org/