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Down in Brazil, Maria, a girl who had recently become a Christian,
stepped carefully down the well-worn path of the river bank.
She had come to get water. Usually
she found other women at the water's edge, but this day she was alone.
As she stooped to dip the pot into the stream, she happened to glance to
one side - and froze with horror. From
the bush on the bank not fifty feet away, a large crocodile emerged, stalking to
attack. There was no time to run
away or jump into the river - what should she do?
"Lord, save me!" she cried.
Instantly as the crocodile dashed at her she found herself heaving her
water pot with all her might into its open mouth. Distracted, it let her escape. Dr. Alexander Whyte tells the story of a man who dreamed that he saw Jesus tied to a whipping post, and a soldier was scourging Him. He saw the whip in the soldier's hand, with its thick lashes studded here and there with bits of lead, which were intended to cut into the flesh. As the soldier brought the whip down on the bare shoulders of Jesus, the dreamer shuddered when he saw the marks and bloodstains it left behind. When the soldier raised his hand to strike again, the dreamer rushed forward intending to stop him. As he did so, the soldier turned round, and the dreamer recognized himself. We often think how cruel those men must have been who scourged and crucified Jesus. But remember that whenever we do wrong we, too, cause the heart of Jesus to bleed with sorrow and pain. --Rev. E. E. Lark
During a business meeting in a
small country church, one of the deacons said, "Pastor, I think we need a
chandelier for the church." Another
deacon stood up and said, "No, I'm against it!" "Why don't we
need a chandelier, brother?" asked the pastor? Education is what you get from reading the small print; experience is what you get from not reading it. - Opel Smith, The Courier-Journal, May 12, 1997, p. H7 Emmanuel. God with us. He who resided in Heaven, co-equal and co-eternal with the Father and the Spirit, willingly descended into our world. He breathed our air, felt our pain, knew our sorrows, and died for our sins. He didn't come to frighten us, but to show us the way to warmth and safety. -- Charles Swindoll in The Finishing Touch High up in the North, in the mythical land called Svithjod, there stands a rock. It is 100 miles high and 100 miles wide. Once every 1,000 years a little bird comes to this rock to sharpen its beak. When the rock has thus been worn away, then a single day of eternity will have gone by. -- Hendrick Willen Van Loon
Ever since I was a little kid,
I didn't want to be me. I wanted to be like Billy Widdleton, and Billy Widdleton
didn't even like me. I walked like he walked; and I talked like he talked; and I
signed up for the high school he signed up for. Every morning you are handed 24 golden hours. They are one of the few things in this world that you get free of charge. If you had all the money in the world, you couldn't buy an extra hour. What will you do with this priceless treasure? Remember, you must use it, as it is given only once. Once wasted you cannot get it back. Failure is never pleasant. It certainly isn't enjoyable to lose a job, see a relationship falter, or fail a test. But the immediate disappointment we feel when we face defeat can be turned into the joy of success if we take the right attitude. Thomas Edison was busy working in his laboratory at 2 o'clock one morning when an assistant came into the room and noticed that the inventor was smiling broadly. "Have you solved the problem?" he asked. "No," replied Edison, "that experiment didn't work at all. Now I can start over again." Edison could have such a confident attitude because he knew that the road to success is often paved with disappointments that serve to extend the road -- not to block it. Each failure brought him a little closer to success.
I was hungry, and you formed a humanities club and discussed my
hunger. Faith is central to all of life. For example, you go to a doctor whose name you cannot pronounce and whose degrees you have never verified. He gives you a prescription you cannot read. You take it to a pharmacist you have never seen before. He gives you a chemical compound you do not understand. Then you go home and take the pill according to the instructions on the bottle. All in trusting, sincere faith!
A Sabbath school class of first-graders was asked to draw a
picture of God. When the pastor
stopped by to inspect their work, the children were happy to show him their
drawings. One had depicted God in
the form of a brightly colored rainbow. Another
had drawn the face of an old man coming out of billowing clouds.
And there was one rendition which looked a lot like Superman.
But perhaps the best was the one proudly displayed by a girl who said,
"I didn't know what God looked like, so I just drew a picture of my
daddy." Fear makes you fumble. When you are afraid, you have a tendency to not do well. The pressure is so great that it causes you to mess up. It's like the guy who was out of money. He decided to rob the bank because he couldn't think of any other way to get the money. He didn't know anything about robbing banks so he practiced what he would say over and over. He got a revolver and a sack for the money. Then he practiced sticking the sack over the counter and pointing the gun in someone's face saying, "Don't mess with me, this is a stick up." When it came time for the real thing, he was really nervous but he was confident he had it down pat. However, when he got in the bank, fear took over and he handed the lady the revolver, pointed the sack at her, and said, "Don't stick with me, this is a mess up." - Charles Lowery, "Falling Isn't That Bad" SBC Life, Sept, 1997, p. 15 The story has been told of a South Sea Islander who proudly displayed his Bible to a G. I. during World War II. "We've outgrown that sort of thing," the soldier said. The native smiled back, "It's a good thing we haven't. If it weren't for this book, you'd have been a meal by now!"
For more than a year a little
old cleaning women, who lived on the wrong side of the tracks, had been trying
to join a fashionable downtown church. The
pastor was not eager to have a seedy looking person in faded, out-of-style
clothes sitting in a pew next to his rich members.
When she called for the fifth time to discuss membership, he put her off
for the fifth time.
Five-year-old Mary was obliged
to undergo an operation, and lost so much blood that it was necessary to resort
to blood transfusion. The blood of thirteen-year-old brother Jimmy was found by
test to match exactly the little patient's. "Will you give your sister some
of your blood, Jim?" asked the doctor. Jimmy set his teeth. "Yes, sir,
if she needs it." He was prepared for the transfusion. In the midst of the
drawing of the blood, the doctor observed Jimmy growing paler and paler.
"Are you ill, Jim?" he asked. "No, sir, but I'm wondering just
when I'll die." "Die?" gasped the doctor. "Do you think
people give their lives when they give a little blood?" "Yes,
sir," replied Jimmy. "And you are giving your life for Mary's?"
"Yes, sir," replied Jimmy. Formula For Spiritual Success Four Dissatisfied Rulers Four high school boys were late to their morning classes one day. They entered the classroom and solemnly told their teacher they were detained due to a flat tire. The sympathetic teacher smiled and told them it was too bad they were late because they had missed a test that morning. But she was willing to let them make it up. She gave them each a piece of paper and a pencil and sent them to four corners of the room. Then she told them they would pass if they could answer just one question: Which tire was flat??? -- Paul Harvey
General Eisenhower is quoted as saying, "The urgent is seldom
important, and the important is seldom urgent."
Too often life is controlled by the "tyranny of the urgent".
We put aside higher and more worthy goals to put out fires.
The word "sincere" comes from two Latin words meaning "without
wax." Artificers of Middle Eastern countries fashioned highly expensive
statuettes out of a very fine porcelain. It was of such fragile nature that
extreme care had to be taken when firing the figurines to keep them from
cracking.
Sister Taylor took out her
Bible and decided she would let the Lord show her the specific verse she needed
for the day. She closed her eyes, opened her Bible, and placed her finger on a
verse. Opening her eyes, she read, "So Judas went away and hanged
himself."
Having just moved into his new office, a pompous colonel was
sitting at his desk when a private knocked on the door.
Conscious of his new position, the colonel told the private to enter,
then quickly picked up the phone and said, "Yes, General, I'll be seeing
the brigadier this afternoon, and I'll pass along your message.
In the meantime, thank you for your good wishes, sir."
Feeling as though he had sufficiently impressed the young enlisted man,
he asked, "What do you want?" Hideyoshi, a Japanese warlord who ruled over Japan in the late 1500s, commissioned a colossal statue of Buddha for a shrine in Kyoto. It took 50,000 men five years to build, but the work had scarcely been completed when the earthquake of 1596 brought the roof of the shrine crashing down and wrecked the statue. In a rage Hideyoski shot an arrow at the fallen colossus. "I put you here at great expense," he shouted, "and you can't even look after your own temple."
"How to Get Rid of a Pastor." How would you feel if God gave you the same amount of time and attention that we devote to Him? If God put as many things ahead of us as we put ahead of Him? If God offered as many excuses as we do and if the excuses were no more justifiable than ours? If God's promises were no more certain than ours? If God withheld His blessings from us as we withhold our offerings from Him? -- Robert G. Lee, SERMONIC LIBRARY, p. 11. I am more deadly than the screaming shell of the artillery. I win without killing. I tear down homes, break hearts, wreck lives. I travel on the wings of the wind. No innocence is strong enough to intimidate me, no purity pure enough to daunt me. I have no regard for truth, no respect for justice, no mercy for the defenseless. My victims are as numerous as the sands of the sea and often as innocent. I never forget and seldom forgive. My name is Gossip. --Morgan Blake
I am writing in response to
your request for additional information. In block number 3 of the accident form,
I put "poor planning" as the cause of my accident. You said in your
letter that I should explain more fully. I trust the following details will be
sufficient. I asked Jesus how much he loved me. He stretched out his arms and said, "This much" - and died. I heard of a man whose sole interest in life was playing the stock market. He studied the financial page of the newspaper avidly every day and it became such an obsession with him that one day as he was engrossed in the financial columns he said aloud to himself, "What wouldn't I give to see the paper one year from now!" The words were no sooner out of his mouth than there was a puff of smoke in the room and a genie handed him a newspaper and then disappeared. As soon as he got over the shock he realized that his wish was granted. The paper in his hand was dated one year hence. Feverishly he sought the financial page and his eyes goggled when he saw how the market had developed. He noted the stocks on which he hoped to reap a bonanza. In the bus on his way to visit the stockbroker he was browsing through the rest of the paper when suddenly staring at him from the obituary columns was the notice of his own death and funeral arrangements! - James A. Feehan, Story Power!, (San Jose, CA: Resource Publications, Inc., 1994) 54
I know of a guy who saw an ant
carrying a piece of straw much larger than he was.
The man thought, "How interesting that the little ant can carry
something so much larger than himself."
So he watched the ant in fascination.
As he watched the ant, the ant came to a crevice in the ground.
The crevice was too big for him to go down into and it was to wide to
cross. The ant took the straw.
Laid the straw down over the crevice.
Walked across the straw and then picked up the straw and went on his way.
The man thought to himself, "The ant turned his burden into a
bridge.
I once read a story about a
conflict that took place between two Indian Rajahs.
The one defeated the other and took captive the son of his rival, and the
day he was to return to his own palace he prepared to march into the city in
triumph. There was a great
procession of elephants, cavalry, infantry, and a long line of captives.
I read recently about some newlyweds who had just moved into their
place with their wedding gifts. Then, an unknown benefactor sent them tickets to
a local show. While still wondering who the person was, they used the tickets,
and, upon returning to their place, they discovered that all of their wedding
gifts had been stolen in their absence. They found a note saying: "Now you
know". The generous giver turned out to be a conniving, selfish thief! I want to take you back with me now to February 3, 62 A.D. . . There's an earthquake, On the Mercalli scale it registers a 9--- that's long before the Richter scale. And the beautiful city of Pompeii is SUDDENLY in ruins. Literally millions in investment are just rubble. But would you believe the Roman Government, poured in the money to rebuild? They rebuilt the general registry, the streets, the amphitheater that seated 20,000 people, a temple to the goddess Isis, and the thermal bath houses. There were two Roman Consuls at that time by the names of Regulus and Virginius. They said, "The gods destroyed Pompeii so that we could be even richer, and it could be even more beautiful." Now then, this beautiful rebuilt city shifts in scenario. The date is August 24, 79 A.D. just 7 years, 6 months, and 21 days following the great earthquake that leveled the city. It's 1 p.m., thousands of Romans are sunning themselves on the beaches. If they bothered to glance up, there was that beautiful scenic Mount Vesuvius, overgrown with brush. . . peering out over the water. That mountain had been quiet for hundreds. . . possibly thousands of years. . . But suddenly, in a few seconds, it EXPLODED. One eye witness described it as a "tree" that went straight up in the air 6,600 feet, a straight tree with heavy foliage and lots of branches. . . and then the branches were shorter and shorter. Having lunch in Cape Messina 31 miles away, is a Naval Prefect, the Commander of the Roman Fleet in that area. His name is Gaius Plinius II. He sees this mushroom-like explosion. He'd never seen anything like it! He instantly calls for a low profile boat with two sets of rowers, and heads for Pompeii--not knowing quite what is happening. He is a naturalist--the author of 37 books--the author of the first encyclopedia of natural history and science in the Roman empire. As he draws closer he realizes suddenly it is a tragedy. The only escape must be by the sea. He summons his entire fleet. The keenest desire of his heart is to save a very close friend living in the Pompeii suburbs-but he failed. For when that straight tree---6,600 feet high ---came down, lava gradually poured down the southeast slope of Mt. Vesuvius---lava 19 to 65 feet DEEP. It's was nearly 2,000 years before we were able to reestablish the scene. But it's perfectly PRESERVED because that soft lava cooled, holding everything in place. Archeologists found the ancient city molded into place, just waiting to be discovered. There's the lady from the house of Faubus--a very rich lady, carrying her box of gold, silver, and jewelry--seeking to escape. . . There are 60 gladiators still chained, waiting to perform in the amphitheater. . . Hundreds of slaves. . . so many people in their villas drinking white wine in the afternoon. They say the vineyards on Mt. Vesuvius were absolutely famous. That moment was caught up in HISTORY, preserved for nearly 2,000 years before it was UNCOVERED by archeologists. It strikes a note of TERROR; there are watchdogs frozen literally where they were. One dog had turned on his master and had succeeded in nearly eating him up. The frantic ones fleeing for the sea, and not making it! And Gaius Plinius II. . . naturalist, scientist . . . did he make it? No, he had asthma; and the toxic gasses caused him to suffocate to death, while seeking to save a friend. So sudden. . . just as sudden as Hiroshima! Just as sudden as Nagasaki! Just as sudden as the calculated burning of the city of Hamburg! Just as sudden as the child who dashed out in front of your car and changed your life! Just as sudden as the day you said: "My whole world is coming apart, and I have nothing left."
I was at a high school
basketball game that went into overtime. The first overtime was so exciting.
The crowd was literally on the edge of their seats in anticipation of the
outcome. Then, the game went into
double overtime. What excitement!
Now the cheering was deafening as the crowd expressed their encouragement
of the home team. Then, the game went into TRIPLE overtime!
Now the crowd was in a frenzy. Everyone was focused on the events on the
court. Everyone was cheering, and everyone anxious to know how the game would
turn out.
If I look through a
piece of red glass, everything is red. If
we look through a piece of blue glass, everything is blue.
If we look through a piece of yellow glass, everything is yellow, and so
on. If a child lives with criticism, he learns to condemn. If there is light in the soul, There will be beauty in the person. If there is beauty in the person, There will be harmony in the house. If there is harmony in the house, There will be order in the nation. If there is order in the nation, There will be peace in the world. - Chinese Proverb
In 1903 the Russian czar noticed a sentry posted for no apparent
reason at a certain location on the Kremlin grounds.
Upon inquiry, he discovered that in 1776 Catherine the Great found there
the first flower of spring. "Post a sentry here," she commanded,
"so that no one tramples that flower under foot!"
In a schoolboy experiment, some young lads put a frog in a
container of water and began to heat the water very slowly.
The water finally reached the boiling point and yet the frog never even
attempted to jump out. Why?
Because the changes in the environment were so slight and slow to occur
that the frog didn't notice them until it was too late.
In ancient China, the people desired security from the barbaric
hordes to the north. So they built
the Great Wall of China. It was too
high to climb over, too thick to break down, and too long to go around.
Security achieved! In Genesis Jesus is the Ram at Abraham's altar.
In his book "Feminine Faces," Clovis Chappel wrote that
when the Roman city of Pompeii was being excavated, the body of a woman was
found mummified by the volcanic ashes of Mount Vesuvius.
Her position told a tragic story. Her
feet pointed toward the city gate, but her outstretched arms and fingers were
straining for something that lay behind her.
The treasure for which she was grasping was a bag of pearls. |