Our Daily Bread

Many people associate “the good life” with success, fame, and money. Yet a dying man who had it all told me that his life hadn’t been worth the effort to attain his success.

Murphy’s Laws are observations about life that seem to have the weight of experience behind them. You’ve probably heard this one: “If anything can go wrong, it will.” Here’s another one: “You can’t do just one thing; everything has its consequences.”

I read a humorous story about a man who strolled out of a hardware store with a smile on his face and a brand-new chainsaw in his hands. He was told it could cut down five big oak trees in an hour. Twenty-four hours later, however, his smile was gone. Frustrated, he was back at the store complaining that the saw would never cut five trees in an hour. “It took me all day to cut down five trees,” he said.

One morning as I was strolling along the shore of the Gulf of Mexico, I saw a middle-aged man sitting in the water. We exchanged greetings, and then he painfully struggled to his feet and began to talk.

First Corinthians 13 is often read at weddings. Yet even optimistic newlyweds will eventually fail to love. The only individual who perfectly fulfills this “love chapter” is Jesus Christ.

Several years ago I read about a girl named Mary who had been born with a cleft palate. When she started school, her classmates teased and taunted her unmercifully because of her scarred and misshapen lip, crooked nose, lopsided teeth, and garbled speech. Mary soon became convinced that no one could love her.

If you want to become one of the nearly 24,000 licensed taxi drivers in London, get ready to do a lot of studying. The only way to get behind the wheel is to master The Blue Book, the single manual for a course that takes between 2 and 4 years to complete. It may take only a few minutes for the driver of a traditional black cab to take you from one point to another—but knowing how to get there required years of purposeful study.

Trouble lay ahead for King Hezekiah of Judah. He had just received a menacing letter from Assyria’s King Sennacherib. This marauding monarch had conquered many cities, and Jerusalem was next on his list. In his letter, Sennacherib mocked the God of Israel and threatened to destroy the holy city.

In the spring of 1894, the Baltimore Orioles came to Boston to play the Red Sox in what was expected to be a routine baseball game. But what happened was anything but routine. The Orioles’ John McGraw got into a fight with Boston’s third baseman. Within minutes all the players from both teams had joined in the brawl.

As I read Proverbs 6:20, which refers to “the law of your mother,” I recall some of my mother’s unique “laws” that have helped me many times.