Our Daily Bread

In the comic strip BC, a cave man stood before a rock labeled “Exchanges.” He complained to the person in charge of exchanges, “My calendar watch won’t budge.” The other man replied, “I don’t wonder. I’m not too choked up about moving into the next year myself.”

In 1983, Ed Woodyard decided where he wanted to spend New Year’s Eve 1999. After some discussion with a reservation agent, he booked a room at a hotel which hadn’t been built yet—the Marriott Marquis that would overlook Times Square in New York City. Now that’s triple faith—that the day will arrive, that the hotel will be built, and that he will still be around.

In a television interview, a highly successful businessman admitted that he is a troubled person. He said he worries little about himself, but he’s afraid something dreadful—such as a nuclear holocaust, a cosmic collision, an environmental disaster, or a plague out of control—may wipe out all life as we know it.

The following story was often told by Charles Haddon Spurgeon: “A cruel king called one of his subjects into his presence and asked him his occupation. The man responded, ‘I’m a blacksmith.’ The ruler then ordered him to go and make a chain of a certain length.

I was relieved to find out that I’m not the only one who forgets things. Everyone does at one time or another, according to Karen Bolla, a Johns Hopkins researcher. These are the things people most often forget:

• names 83%
• where something is 60%
• telephone numbers 57%
• words 53%
• what was said 49%
• faces 42%

Mark was 21 and dependent on drugs. Finding happiness was his big goal in life, a goal that had eluded him. Once, while talking with our family, his frustration erupted: “Look, all I want in life is happiness. I want to feel happy. Is that asking too much?”

After the Apollo XV mission, Colonel James Irwin related some of the high points of his experience. He told of weightless bodies floating free in the space capsule, the rising crescent of the earth as seen from the moon, and the triumphal splashdown before a watching world.

In the vivid imagination of many young children, high above the decorations and colorful holiday lights, a jolly man in a red suit is pulled through the sky by a team of flying reindeer. Youngsters go to bed in fitful anticipation of the next morning. It’s Christmas Eve!

Perhaps you remember the newspaper photograph in December 1991 that showed eight members of a police SWAT team looking for a sniper in a small Missouri town. Stretched across the road over their heads was a Christmas banner that read “Peace On Earth.” The headline above the photo said: Four Killed, One Wounded in Attacks.

The angel announced to Joseph, “You shall call His name Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins” (Mt. 1:21).