Our Daily Bread

The owner of a small foreign car had begun to irritate his friends by bragging incessantly about his car’s gas mileage. So they devised a plan to bring his boasts to an end. Every day one of them would secretly pour a few gallons of gas into the car’s tank. Soon the braggart was boasting of getting as much as 90 miles per gallon.

In the mid-70s, my husband Bill and I befriended a drug addict named Derek on the London subway. Days later we invited him to come and live with our family. He soon received Christ and His forgiveness.

Church people can get quite upset about music. Some Christians feel that God is particularly drawn to old hymns sung to the strains of a pipe organ. Others are sure that God enjoys choruses sung over and over again. Some clap their hands when they sing while others fold their arms.

Consider the life of Elkanah. He is described in 1 Samuel 1 as a man who “went up from his city yearly to worship and sacrifice to the Lord of hosts” (v.3). That’s a staggering fact in light of the rest of the story. We read, “Also the two sons of Eli, Hophni and Phinehas, the priests of the Lord, were there.”

Once there was a kite that loved to fly high. Nothing made it happier than to be caught in a stiff breeze that would send it soaring upward, far above the grassy meadows below. It loved the feel of the wind and the faraway view.

Rahab had a remarkable faith. Although it seemed incredible that Joshua’s unequipped army would be able to break down or scale the walls of Jericho, she remembered what God had done for the Israelites in the past. So she put her trust in Israel’s God by protecting the spies, and by staking her future on the hope that God would do what seemed impossible. Her trust in God involved the past, the present, and the future.

Communication is vital to any relationship: parent and child, husband and wife, employer and employee, coach and athlete. And most important—God and those who love Him.

In 1896, Sherwood Eddy enthusiastically began his ministry as a missionary to India. But after just a year he was ready to quit—his energy depleted, his spirit broken.

Joshua, a precocious 2-year-old, watched his mother baking cookies. “Please, may I have one?” he asked hopefully. “Not before supper,” his mother replied. Joshua ran tearfully to his room, then reappeared with this message: “Jesus just told me it’s okay to have a cookie now.” “Jesus didn’t tell me!” his mother retorted, to which Joshua replied, “You must not have been listening!”

A well-known coach was once asked, “How much does college football contribute to the national physical-fitness picture?”