"Did you see that fellow that passed just now? I wonder what is wrong with him?" said George.

"He's had some brain damage in an accident, and it affects part of his body. He's really a nice fellow. I see him in church every Sunday," said Jim.

"If seeing him in church makes him a nice fellow," said George, "there must be damage to another part of my brain."

"What I meant," answered Jim, "is that's how I got to know him quite well, and thus he explained to me about his handicap. When you underst…

Karl Barth was lecturing to a group of students at Princeton. One student asked the German theologian "Sir, don't you think that…

James Moore remembers the time when he was seven years old and got lost at the Ringling Brothers Circus. It was a frightening experience for a seven-year-old boy in a crowd of over twenty thousand. Jim and his older brother, Bob, went to the concession stand to buy some cotton candy. People were pushing and pressing toward the counter. Since Bob was taller he was waited on first. After Bob got his cotton candy he stepped aside for his brother. Just then loud laughter came from the arena. Bob wanted to see what was going on. Certainly he didn't mean to leave his small brother alone. He simply got caught up in the excit…

Mickey Rivers, a one time outfielder for the Texas Rangers, explained his philosophy of life: Ain't no sense worrying ab…

There is a story about Abraham Lincoln who was arguing with a political opponent.

"How many legs does a cow have?" he asked his adversary.

"Four, o…

A Christian who understands his own religion laughs when unbelievers expect to trouble him by the assertion that J…

On her travels to the Far East, Margaret Bottome learned 3 Vital Lessons in Faith & Following. There came a guide to her group and said to them, "Will you be good enough to give everything to me? I will take care of everything." So they gave him their luggage, but kept their small handbags. The guide spoke, "You must give everything to me." They protested that there were things that were vital to them for their trip, but the guide simply said, "They will be far safer with me, and you wil…

A woman was diagnosed with a terminal illness and had been given three months to live. As she was getting her things in order, she contacted her pastor and asked him to come to her house to discuss some of her final wishes. She told him which songs she wanted sung at her funeral service, what Scriptures she would like read, and what outfit she wanted to be buried in. She requested to be buried with her favorite …

The year was 1275 BC, before Christ.  The land was Egypt. The ruler was Pharaoh. The leader of the Jews was Moses. The Jews had been in slavery for four hundred years to the Egyptians, building their cities and pyramids. But God had sent the plagues, and now the Jewish nation was beginning their exodus from slavery.  And at this particular moment, they were stopped by a body of water, the Red Sea, and the Egyptian chariots and horses were rapidly c…

There is a story told of a dying man who asked his Christian doctor to tell him something about the place to which he was going. As the doctor fumbled for a reply, he heard a scratch…

The author Bill Bryson, tells of going to Hannibal, Missouri, to visit the boyhood home of Mark Twain. Mark Twain was one of his heroes. As he visited the home, he was disappointed. The home was supposed to be a faithful reproduction of the original, but it was easy to see that it was not. Far too many items from the 20th century were included in the home. In a sense it was false advertising. Mr. Bryson was further disappointed that he was not able to actually go inside t…

Dawne Olson, a South Dakota mother of four, was preparing to give a talk on unity at her women's Bible study. She woke up early to type out the scripture verses. She wasn't quite finished when her four children began coming downstairs asking for breakfast. She could hear the children just around the corner in the kitchen as they rummaged through the refrigerator and cupboards for something to eat…

Robert Drake is a Tennessean who writes stories about growing up in that part of the country a generation ago. He told a story about Miss Caroline Walker, who was a music teacher. She had been doing it for as long as anybody could remember. She was something of a legend in her county in Tennessee.

She had two goals in teaching. One was to teach her girls to be ladies. So she taught them manners as much as she taught them music. She also taught them to play one piece perfectly for the May recital. She rehearsed them and drilled them all year long to play that one piece perfectly, including instructions on how to sit on the piano bench, to spread your skirt as you sit down, and how to announce the song by standing straight and holding your hands together at your waist.

The night of the rec…

"When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established; what are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them?" (Psalm 8:3-4)

What, indeed? H.L. Mencken said that man was "a sick f…

A little girl had a cut near her eye. Her father quickly took her to see the doctor. The cut was not serious, but the location of the injury made it important that it be fixed properly. The doctor decided a couple of stitches were needed, but he didn't want to give the child an anesthetic. He explained to her that the procedure would be painful and asked if she …

A century ago John Henry Newman wrote an evening prayer which expresses well the whole spirit in which we see the present in the light of that place which C…

Homecomings can be wonderful, emotionally rewarding experiences. About one memorable homecoming, Rev. Scott Grant writes:

"A few years back I spent two months overseas. Experiencing a different culture was exhilarating at first but then became somewhat demanding. I began to yearn for home. After a long flight across …

Regret. It has powerful strength to trouble our hearts. Some of our most painful regrets are for opportunities lost. As John Greenleaf Whittier said:

Of all sad words of tongue or pen.
The saddest are these: It might have been!

How many people go under a dark cloud by thinking, even momentarily, of the person they almost married, the investment they almost made, the position they nearly won. But for every person who is filled with regret for an opportunity lost, there is another who regrets a deed done, a word spoken, a relationship consummated. These are the stories of decisions made, of tempers lost, of conversations that cannot …

How long would you continue to fly with an airline whose motto was "Safety Standards are Fine for Those Who Are Uptight about It, But Our Engineers Aren't So Narrow"? How excited would you be about going under the scalpe…

The great American humorist, Will Rogers, had the reputation that he could make anyone laugh. President Calvin Coolidge, on the other hand, had the reputation that he never laughed. Want to know what happened the time those two met? Rogers was invited to visit the White House and as was the custom, the …

Some pastors fall into the trap of feeling that their job is to rescue people. But only Christ can save. Perhaps the best thing ministers can do is grasp their own salvation, and share that …

In 1816, Lord Byron wrote a narrative poem that has become a classic. The poem is titled, "The Prisoner of Chillon," and it is the story of a man incarcerated in the dungeon at the Castle of Chillon near Lake Geneva, Switzerland.

The prisoner was in a narrow, cramped dungeon cell for such a long time that he began to think of it as home. He made friends with the spiders, insects, and mice that shared his cell. They were all inmates of the same dungeon and he was monarch of each race.

The years in the dark dungeon cell had taken their toll. He was no longer unhappy or uncomf…

There is an old story about a man who complained that he had too much work to do. He never seemed to be caught up. Every day for twenty years he looked at his desk piled high with unfinished projects ... letters to be answered ... bills to be paid ... and problems to be solved. When he walked out of the house to get away from the clutter, he saw the grass that needed to be cut and the hedges that needed to be trimmed. If he could only get caught up, just o…

Every believer faces trouble. It is part of life itself. As long as we are in this world, we will face trouble, saint and sinner alike. J.C. Ryle (Expository Thoughts on John's Gospel) calls the words of Christ in our text, "A precious remedy against an old disease." The disease, of cou…

Horatio G. Spafford was a Chicago attorney who lost everything he had in the great Chicago fire of 1871. Yet he put his best efforts into helping Dwight L. Moody rebuild the Northside Tabernacle, the first building to go back up after that disaster. In 1873 Spafford's wife and four daughters were en route to England aboard the Ville du Havre…

What are you sure of? What is it that you know that you know that you know?  

There is a saying that the only sure things are death and taxes. In fact, taxes are even surer than death as someone will have to file your last income tax statement for you even after you die. Life raises the stakes on each of us from time to time taking away our certainties.

• You are certain that you have the whole…

At age ninety-three, Rose Kennedy was being interviewed by a magazine reporter. By this time, four of her nine children had died violently. Another daughter, Rosemary, was mentally disabled all her life and would soon be gone.

Mrs. Kennedy had outlived her husband long enough to have seen his…

Eric Clapton, arguably the greatest living rock guitarist, wrote a heart wrenching song about the death of his four year old son (March 20, 1991). He fell from a 53rd-story window. Clapton took nine months off and when he returned his music had changed. The hardship had made his music softer, more powerful, and more reflective. You have perhaps heard the song he wrote about his son's death. It is a song of hope:

Would you know my name if I saw you in heaven?
Would it be the same if I saw you in heaven?
I must be strong and carry on,
'Cause I know I don't b…

Sometimes, if you will just wait, problems take care of themselves. J. Arthur Rank had a system for doing that. He was one of the early pio­neers of the film industry in Great Britain, and he also happened to be a devout Christian.

Rank found he couldn’t push his worries out of his mind completely; they were always slipping back in. So he finally made a pact with God to limit his worrying to Wedn…

Johnny Carson told a story about the time when, as the host of the Tonight Show, he made a joke about there being a toilet paper shortage in the city.

The next day there really was a shortage because all the viewers who had watched his show ran out afterward and bought up extra toilet paper just in case. There was no trust in the fact that people, if they chose to work together, could ration out the toilet paper to make sure there would be enough for everyone. People panicked and gr…

Another great way to describe the Christian attitude toward "good works," toward moral and spiritual effort, is to remember the words of Saint Paul in 1 Corinthians 15:10: "I worked h…

I take great comfort in God. I think he is considerably amused at us many t…

Be not troubled with thoughts of the morrow,
Of duties you surely must do.
On the Lord cast your burden of sorrow;
It matters to Him about you!…

It's like those inspirational sayings found on motivational posters. Sayings like: "No pain, no gain." And "When the going gets tough, the tough get going" etc. Recently I saw a list of slightly more honest sayings for office walls:

Hang in th…

A little girl lost a playmate in death and one day reported to her family that …

In one of his books writer and philosopher Loren Eiseley tells about the time when he was only a young lad and his father died. His father died a slow death in great bodily torture. Eisley's mother was deaf. Young Loren alone heard the sounds of his father's agony. This was before the wide application of painkilling drugs. Eiseley said a curious thing happened to him during that very stress filled time. He became so tense that he could no longer bear the ticking of the alarm clock in his own bedroom. He smothered it with a blanket but still he heard it as if it were ticking in his own head. H…

A music critic tells the story of hearing the great jazz trumpeter, Miles Davis, playing in a club. At one point, Miles played a beautiful ballad, and he played it so lovingly and with such heartbroken passion that he brought the house down.…

Immediately after fighting had stopped in World War II, American soldiers gathered up many hungry and homeless children and placed them in tent cities. Many of them were malnourished and in need of medical care. The soldiers shared their bread with them. However, the soldiers noticed…

The Joe Bayly family, in the course of several years, lost three of their children. In his book View from A Hearse, (Elgin, Ill.: Cook, 1973) Joe Bayly shared his honest feelings:

“I was sitting there torn by grief. Someone c…

Douglas Maurer, 15, of Creve Coeur, Missouri, had been feeling bad for several days. His temperature was ranging between 103 and 105 degrees, and he was suffering from severe flu-like symptoms. Finally, his mother took him to the hospital in St. Louis. Douglas Maurer was diagnosed as having leukemia.

The doctors told him in frank terms about his disease. They said that for the next three years, he would have to undergo chemotherapy. They didn't sugarcoat the side effects. They told Douglas he would go bald…

Presbyterian pastor and writer Frederick Buechner recalls one low time in his life when God broke through in an unusual way. "I remember sitting parked by the roadside once," Buechner writes, "terribly depressed and afraid about my daughter's illness and what was going on in our family." As he was sitting there thinking about his daughter's illness, he noticed a car that seemed to come from nowhere. His message from God, the word he most needed to see at that moment, was found on the license plate. This personalized license plate, well, let m…

There was a man by the name of Soren Kierkegaard, a Danish philosopher back in the 19th century. The interesting thing is that his writings did not make a real impact on thought and religion until the 20th century. In some of his writings he talks about several different steps that we as human beings take in the religious quest. The first level he talks about is the aesthetic level. Now you do not have to worry about the technical name. Just trust me that the first level is called the aesthetic level. What he talks about is that in this level people dabble in life, trying to enjoy its pleasures. The key word of this level is pleasure-seeking. The second level of life is the ethical level. That is when people begin to take li…

There was just no way Joshua could logically explain his battle plan to take Jericho. God told Joshua exactly what he wanted him to do. Can you picture Joshua trying to relate the plan to his generals?

"Well, we’re going to march around the city."

"Then what?"

"We’re going to do it seven times."

"Uh huh, then?"

"We’re going to blow the trumpets and make a lot of noise."

"Really?"

"Then the walls are going to fall down."

They probably thought Joshua had battle fatigue. But as the trumpets blasted on the seventh trip ar…

Perhaps some of you remember General Alexander Haig, a military leader in the war in Vietnam and political leader in the Reagan administration. Now, General Haig was not exactly what you would call a great theologian. He once said something which on the surface sounded utterly stupid, and he was roundly criticized by the media for saying it. He said, "Th…

But there is a fourth kind of soil. There is the seed that falls upon the good earth and takes root and grows to maturity. This crop, we are told, is a harvest that will bear fruit a hundred fold. Jesus mentions this last because itis the thrust of the story. True, there are failures, but the good news is that there is also victory.

Now, here is the hard part. Our efforts in life are not always measurable. Sometimes, you may not see the final product. You may not see the actual harvest. Sometimes all we can do is plant a seed, and trust that God will do the rest. A school teacher works with a troubled child, but she …

One of the main reasons people hold false perceptions of God is our tendency to project onto God the unloving characteristics of the people we look up to. We tend to believe that God is going to treat us as others do. The Gaultieres agree: We like to think that we develop our image of God from the Bible and teachings of the church, not from our relationships, some of which have been painful. It's easier if our God image is simply based on learning and believing the right things. Yet, intensive clinical studies on the development of peoples' images of God show that it is not so simple. One psychologist found that this spiritual development of the God image is more of an emotional process than an intellectual one. She brings out the importance of family and other relationships to the develop…

In a large attractive office in a major city, a man worked for several months next to a small attractive woman. He had been there only a few days when he thought he'd ask her to lunch, which he did. The following day he asked her for dinner and they began a long dating relationship. They went to craft fairs together, since he liked to do that. They went to the ocean, which he also liked to do. They used to take long walks along the river.

He liked this relationship. He had lived for many years with his mother. In fact, it was only a few months after she died that he began dating his co-worker. Little by little, however, she began to dislike both the relationship and this man. She felt like she really wasn't herself when she was with him. She couldn't speak what she really felt. She rarely…

The following is a poem from Tim Hansel's book "Holy Sweat" which describes how we should ride through life with Jesus in control:

At first, I saw God as my observer, my judge, keeping track of the things I did wrong, so as to know whether I merited heaven or hell when I die. He was out there sort of like the president. I recognized His picture when I saw it, but I didn't really know Him.

But later on, when I recognized this Higher Power, it seemed as though life was rather like a bike ride, but it was a tandem bike, and I noticed that God was in the back helping me pedal.

I don't know just when it was that he suggested we change places, but life has not be…

I believe it was the Mills Brothers who made popular the song, "You Always Hurt the One You Love." Fighting is one of the realities of married life. Unfortunately, most of us do not handle it well. Fighting is a negative way of communicating some very strong feelings. If we accept the premise that the point of all communication is to get closer to each other, then we might seek more constructive and positive ways of communicating our strong feelings rather than destructive fighting. Although space doesn’t permit us to consider all the suggestions for what I call "good fighting," let me mention just a few. Discover what you are really fighting about. What’s really underneath it all, then stick to the subject, don’t bring up past history. No name calling. Remember you are fighting with the o…

William Willimon, the Chaplain at DukeUniversity, tells of a woman who, with her family had begun to attend his church. Quoting him, he says, "She attended our church when her family vacationed at the coast. She said she had begun attending our church a number of years before because it was the only church on the beach where a black person could feel welcomed. This pleased me. She had had a difficult life and had experienced first hand oppression, tragedy, and hate. One summer she arrived with her family and, when I visited her, she told me the previous year had been tough. Her beloved husband of many years had died a terrible and painful de…