Winston Churchill planned his funeral before he died. His wishes called for a bugler, positioned high in the dome of Saint Paul’s to play the taps after the benediction. The taps were meant to represent that his physical life was over. But then came the most dramatic turn: as soon as the taps was finished, another bugler, placed on the other side of the great dome, played the notes of reveille—It’s time to get up. It’s time to get up. It’s time to get up in the morning. At the end of history, the last note will not be taps; it will be reveille.
Perspective
A submarine was being tested and had to remain submerged for many hours. When it returned to the harbor, the captain was asked, “How did the terrible storm last night affect you?” The officer looked at him in surprise and exclaimed, “Storm? We didn’t even know there was one!” The sub had been so far beneath the surface that it had reached the area known to sailors as the cushion of the sea. Although the ocean may be whipped into huge waves by high winds, the waters below are never stirred.
A young couple moved into a new neighborhood. The next morning while they are eating breakfast, the young woman saw her neighbor hanging her wash to dry. “That laundry is not very clean,” she said. “She doesn’t know how to wash correctly. Perhaps she needs better laundry soap.” Her husband looked on, but remained silent. Every time her neighbor hung her wash to dry, the young woman repeated her observations about the dirty laundry.
Ravensbruck was known as one of the worst German concentration camps during World War II. When Corrie ten Boom and her sister Betsie found themselves imprisoned there, they were disgusted to discover that their barracks were infested with fleas.
When Corrie began to complain, Betsie insisted that they instead give thanks, quoting 1 Thessalonians 5:18, “In every thing give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you.” With some persuasion, Corrie finally joined her sister in thanking God for the fleas.
The oyster takes a grain of sand and turns it into a beautiful pearl. Many people are just the opposite—they take pearls and turn them into grains of sand.
Submitted by the homiletics class of West Coast Baptist College
I heard once of a man who dreamed that he was swept into Heaven, and oh, he was so delighted to think that he had at last got there. All at once one came and said: “Come, I want to show you something.” He took him to the battlements, and he said, “Look down yonder; what do you see?”
“I see a very dark world.”
“Look and see if you know it.”
“Why, yes,” he said, “that is the world I have come from.”
“What do you see?”
“Men are blindfolded there; many of them are going over a precipice.”
Ask anyone about the color of bubble gum and they’ll invariably say “pink.” In 1928, Walter Diemer accidentally created the first successful batch of bubble gum while playing around with different recipes. He made it pink because, at the time, that was the only food coloring available in the factory. When contemplating whether to discard or memorialize something, it might be wise to chew a piece of bubble gum and think about the initial reasoning behind that particular tradition.
Source: Houston Chronicle
Isn’t it strange how a twenty dollar bill seems like such a large amount when you donate it to church, but such a small amount when you go shopping?
Isn’t it strange how two hours seem so long when you’re at church, and so short when you’re at a ball game?
Isn’t it strange that you can’t find a word to say when you’re praying but you have no trouble thinking what to talk about with a friend?
Isn’t it strange how difficult and boring you think it is to read one chapter of the Bible but how easy it is to read 100 pages of a popular novel?
“The term Stockholm Syndrome first occurred in 1973 at an attempted bank robbery in Stockholm, Sweden. A man tried to rob a bank, and the police caught him inside. He took three female hostages and one male hostage and held them for 131 hours, during which time he terrorized them. He fired his Russian automatic assault weapon at them. He threatened to kill them on numerous occasions. He put nooses around their necks and threatened to hang them. But he didn’t harm any of them.
Man calls it an accident; God calls it an abomination.
Man calls it a blunder; God calls it blindness.
Man calls it a chance; God calls it a choice.
Man calls it an error; God calls it an enmity.
Man calls it a fascination; God calls it a fatality.
Man calls it an infirmity; God calls it an iniquity.
Man calls it a luxury; God calls it a leprosy.
Man calls it a liberty; God calls it lawlessness.
Man calls it a trifle; God calls it a tragedy.
Man calls it a mistake; God calls it a madness.
The noted English architect Sir Christopher Wren was supervising the construction of a magnificent cathedral in London. A journalist thought it would be interesting to interview some of the workers, so he chose three and asked them this question, “What are you doing?” The first replied, “I’m cutting stone for ten shillings a day.” The next answered, “I’m putting in ten hours a day on this job.” But the third said, “I’m helping Sir Christopher Wren construct one of London’s greatest cathedrals.”
Both the hummingbird and the vulture fly over our nation’s deserts. All vultures see is rotting meat, because that is what they look for. They thrive on that diet. But hummingbirds ignore the smelly flesh of dead animals. Instead, they look for the colorful blossoms of desert plants. Vultures live on what was. They live on the past. They fill themselves with what is dead and gone. But hummingbirds live on what is. They seek new life. They fill themselves with freshness and life. Each bird finds what it is looking for. We all do.
Norman Cousins was hospitalized with a rare, crippling form of arthritis. When he was diagnosed as incurable, Cousins checked out of the hospital. Aware of the harmful effects that negative emotions can have on the body, Cousins reasoned the reverse was true. So he borrowed a movie projector and prescribed his own treatment, consisting of Marx Brothers films and old “Candid Camera” reruns. It didn’t take long for him to discover that 10 minutes of laughter provided two hours of pain free sleep. Amazingly, his debilitating disease was eventually reversed.
There is a tale told of the great English actor, Macready. An eminent preacher once said to him: “I wish you would explain to me something.”
“Well, what is it? I don’t know that I can explain anything to a preacher.”
“What is the difference between you and me? You are appearing before crowds night after night with fiction, and the crowds come wherever you go. I am preaching the essential and unchangeable truth, and I am not getting any crowd at all.”
A big lump of something lay for centuries in a shallow pool in North Carolina. People passing by just saw an ugly lump and walked on.
One day a poor man saw the heavy lump, and thinking it would be a good thing to hold his door open, took it home. Later a geologist stopped at the poor man’s home and identified the lump as the biggest piece of gold ever found east of the Rockies.
Many people see Jesus as only a historical figure. Friend, you must see Jesus as the only One who can save you from the penalty of your sin.
In Words We Live By, Brian Burrell tells of an armed robber named Dennis Lee Curtis who was arrested in 1992 in Rapid City, South Dakota. Curtis apparently had scruples about his thievery. In his wallet the police found a sheet of paper on which was written the following code, sort of a robber's rules:
A high-school boy in New York City broke his nose. He was excused from school in order to go to a clinic to have it treated. After having his nose treated, he went to the Bronx Zoo. As he walked through the turnstile, he was immediately surrounded by officials of the zoo and photographers from the New York press. He was the 100,000,000th visitor to the Zoo since its foundation and was presented with a life membership in the New York Zoological Society.
If we look through a piece of red glass, everything is red; through blue glass, everything is blue; through yellow glass, everything is yellow, and so on.
The glorious truth is that when we believe in the Lord Jesus Christ as our Saviour, God looks at us through the Lord Jesus Christ. He sees us in all the white holiness of His Son. That is the great New Testament doctrine of the imputation of our sin to the account of Christ and His righteousness to our account.
A Japanese soldier by the name of Shoichi Yokoi lived in a cave on the island of Guam to which he fled in 1944 when the tides of war began to change. Fearing for his life, this man stayed hidden for twenty-eight years in the jungle cave, coming out only at night. During this long period of time, this self-imposed hermit lived on frogs, rats, snails, shrimp, nuts, and mangoes. He had carried a pair of trousers and a jacket from a burlap-like cloth made from tree bark.
You can fool the hapless public,
You
can be a subtle fraud,
You can hide your little meanness,
But
you can’t fool God!
You can advertise your virtues,
You
can self-achievement laud,
You can load yourself with riches,
But
you can’t fool God!
You can criticize the Bible,
You
can be a selfish clod,
You can lie, swear, drink, and gamble,
But
you can’t fool God!
You can magnify your talent,
You
can hear the world applaud,
You can boast yourself somebody,
But
you can’t fool God!