One night at Birdland, the legendary jazz bar, Cab Calloway was introducing a promising young saxophone player. As the sax player finished his set, a self-appointed jazz critic came over to him and said, in front of Cab, “You aren’t that good, man. All you can do is play like Charlie Parker.”

Cab took the young man’s sax and handed it over to the critic. “Here,” he said, “you play it like Charlie Parker.”

Isn’t it true that whenever you are trying to do something significant, somebody comes around to criticize? Busybodies. The world is full of them.

King Duncan, Collected Sermons, www.Sermons.com