During the Great Depression, many people in the US lived in shantytowns made up of plywood, tarps, and blankets. These decrepit dwellings, known as “Hoovervilles,” housed those who had been evicted from their homes. Many blamed President Herbert Hoover for the economic woes.
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For hundreds of years, windmills around the world have been used to pump water and to process grains. But in the last few decades, as wind turbines producing electricity have become more prevalent, a “fly in the ointment” unexpectedly occurred.
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I didn’t think that the hesitation in my car engine and that little yellow “check engine” light on my dashboard really needed my immediate attention. I sang it away, saying that I would get to it tomorrow. However, the next morning when I turned the key to start my car, it wouldn’t start. My first reaction was frustration, knowing that this would mean money, time, and inconvenience. My second thought was more of a resolution: I need to pay attention to warning lights that are trying to get my attention—they can mean something is wrong.
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My husband, a self-proclaimed computer illiterate, purchased a computer to help him with his business. After giving him a few pointers, I left him alone to do some experimenting. It wasn’t long, however, before I heard a slightly panicked voice from the office: “Hey, where’s that ‘uh-oh’ button?”
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All nations have heroes, but Israel may be alone in making epic literature about its greatest hero’s failings (Ps. 51). This eloquent psalm shows that Israel ultimately remembered David more for his devotion to God than for his political achievements.
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During a Sunday worship service, our congregation said this prayer of confession in unison: “Gracious God, like many believers before us, we complain when things do not go our way. We want abundance of everything rather than what is sufficient to sustain us. We would rather be elsewhere than where we are at the moment. We would rather have the gifts You give to others than what You provide for us. We would rather have You serve us than serve You. Forgive our lack of gratitude for what You give.”
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For many years, Lake Okeechobee hid its secrets in thick waters and layers of muck. But in 2007, drought shrank the Florida lake to its lowest level since officials began keeping records in 1932, unveiling hundreds of years of history. Raking through the bottom of the lake, archaeologists found artifacts, pottery, human bone fragments, and even boats.
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The elderly woman didn’t like the way her pastor prayed each Sunday morning, so she told him. It bothered her that before he preached he would confess to God that he had sinned the week before. “Pastor,” she said, “I don’t like to think my pastor sins.”
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When Abraham Lincoln was introduced to author Harriet Beecher Stowe, he reportedly said that she was “the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war.”
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A man told his doctor that he thought his wife was going deaf. The doctor told him to conduct a simple test. When the man reached the front door of his home, he called out, “Darling, is dinner ready?” Hearing no response, he walked inside and repeated himself. Still no reply. On the third try, when he was just behind her, he finally heard her say, “For the third time, yes!”
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Imagine relaxing on a rubber raft along the shore, eyes closed, soaking up the sun and listening to the gentle crash of waves. You don’t have a care in the world—until you open your eyes! Suddenly the shore is alarmingly distant.
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What is memory? What is this faculty that enables us to recall past feelings, sights, sounds, and experiences? By what process are events recorded, stored, and preserved in our brain to be brought back again and again? Much is still mystery.
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Decades ago, I visited a ministry center in West Africa and saw a little girl climb onto a truck that had a public address system. Smiling, she began to sing over the microphone:
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My garage serves as “storage” for things that don’t have a place in our home, and, frankly, there are times when I am ashamed to open the door. I don’t want anyone to see the clutter. So, periodically, I set aside a workday to clean it up.
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The 4,000-mile-long Great Wall of China was built to keep out invaders from the north. The first wall was constructed by Shi Huangdi, the first emperor of China, who lived between 259 and 210 bc. But in ad 1644 the Manchus broke through the Great Wall and overran China. They did this by bribing a general of the Ming dynasty to open the gates.
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Joseph found himself in a difficult position one day when his master’s wife attempted to seduce him. How tantalizing this woman must have been to a healthy young man! And it must have occurred to Joseph how fearsome her wrath would be when he spurned her advances.
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During an all-night festival in Paris, five young people, apparently drunk, broke into the Orsay Museum and left a 4-inch gash in a priceless painting by Claude Monet. Culture Minister Christine Albanel said the painting could be restored, but she was deeply disturbed at the damage done by “a purely criminal act.”
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A number of computer games come with a special feature called the “Boss Key.” If you’re playing a game when you’re supposed to be working, and someone (like the boss) walks into your office, you quickly strike the Boss Key. Your computer screen changes immediately, hiding what you’ve been doing.
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I’m a “catch and release” fisherman, which means I don’t kill the trout I catch, but net and handle them gently and set them free. It’s a technique that ensures “sustainability,” as conservation officers like to say, and keeps trout and other target species from disappearing in heavily fished waters.
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I have a friend who recently underwent a laryngoscopy. I winced as he explained how his doctor took a camera with a light on the end and stuck it down his throat to try to find the cause of his pain.
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I love the prayer that begins, “God be in my head.” When I first heard it, admittedly I thought it sounded a little weird. But then I got to thinking how unfortunate it is if in our efforts to get closer to Jesus we focus on our emotional experience of Him and check our brains at the door. Without His truth ringing in our heads, we’re bound to get off track.
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When we went on a weekend road trip with some friends, we had our first experience using a Global Positioning System. The GPS has a female voice, so our friends John and Mary call their device Gladys. We programmed our destination into the GPS, and she did her job and plotted our course. Then we sat back. Having put our faith in this little navigator, we let her direct us.
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Politicians are adept at “spinning” the details of a story to advance their own agenda. During a political campaign, spin doctors massage stories to ensure that their candidate is cast in a positive light—often at the expense of the truth. This leaves us with serious questions about what the real truth is.
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I love coconut. I always have! So, after an exhausting day in second grade, I found a bag of shredded coconut in the cupboard and devoured the whole thing. When my mother went into the kitchen later to bake—you guessed it, a coconut cake—I heard, “Who ate the coconut?!”
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While waiting at the doctor’s office, I read an article about the importance of freedom of speech. The writer suggested that producing obscene movies and pornography is good because it helps us to see our own potential for evil. He believes that naively thinking we are innocent is worse than knowing about and watching evil.
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A patient checked in to a Florida hospital for a life-saving amputation. He awoke to find that the wrong foot had been removed. In the same hospital, another patient had surgery on the wrong knee.
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Some theologians divide transgressions into “sins of the flesh” and “sins of the spirit.” This means that some sins originate in our physical passions; others come from our “heart” or disposition. In the story of the prodigal son, the elder brother’s attitude gives us an example of the latter.
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My father-in-law took a rocky, barren hilltop in Texas and transformed it into a beautiful homesite with a shaded green lawn. After removing thousands of rocks, he added topsoil, planted trees and grass, and kept it watered. Since his death, it has lacked his consistent care. Today when I visit and work around that house, battling the invading thistles, thorns, and weeds, I ponder the state of my own heart.
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A certain businessman was notorious for saving almost everything that came across his desk—especially correspondence. Consequently, the files in his office were bulging. One day his secretary asked if she might dispose of all the old, useless material. The man was reluctant, but finally said, “Well, all right, but be sure you make a copy of everything before you throw it away.”
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In the agony of Psalm 51, David seems to contradict himself. He exclaims, “You do not desire sacrifice, or else I would give it; You do not delight in burnt offering” (v.16). Then, two verses later, he says, “You shall be pleased with the sacrifices of righteousness, with burnt offering” (v.19). Does God want our sacrifices or not?
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In Joel’s book of prophecy, God declared: “I am in the midst of Israel . . . . My people shall never be put to shame” (2:27). But earlier in the chapter God promised to fight against His people. A plague of locusts would descend like a ravenous army on the nation (vv.2-11).
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It happened more than 30 years ago but it still hurts. During a period of spiritual rebellion, I ran into a young man I had introduced to Christ. He was stunned to discover that I had walked away from the Lord and was no longer the person he had known. It is one of my most regretted experiences, and I still pray for an opportunity to make it right with him.
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While visiting a US Civil War battlefield in Virginia, I was struck by a story about an army unit that arrived too late for a major battle. The troops had stopped to loot a camp abandoned by their enemy. By taking what they felt they needed, they could not accomplish their mission.
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As a young man in the late 1600s, Edward Teach joined the crew of a British ship that was headed to the Caribbean. Much later in his nautical career, he managed to capture a merchant vessel and turn it into a 40-gun warship. Teach soon became known as Blackbeard—the most feared pirate in the hemisphere.
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A children’s book called The Chance World describes an imaginary planet where everything happens unpredictably. For example, the sun might rise one day or it might not, and it might appear at any hour. Some days the moon might come up in its place. One day you might jump up and not come down, and the next day find gravity so strong you can’t even lift your feet.
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Whenever my husband and I leave the house, our dog Maggie goes sniffing for old shoes and dirty laundry. She surrounds herself with what she finds and then sleeps with it near her nose. The familiar smells comfort her until we return.
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The rubber plant I bought for my wife Dorothy added a touch of life to our home. But one morning its leaves were dropping as if in a state of dejection. I wondered what happened.
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In 1845, the ill-fated Franklin Expedition sailed from England to find a passage across the Arctic Ocean.
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I had not worked in my yard for several weeks, and I was amazed at how quickly weeds had sprung up and taken over. Weeds don’t need tending; they seem to love to sprout up for anyone who just lets things go. A bed of beautiful flowers, however, takes watering, feeding, and of course, weeding. Flowers thrive under the care of one who is not afraid to get dirt under his fingernails.
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People seldom use the word sin anymore. When we do something wrong, we say we showed “inappropriate behavior” or made a “tactical error” or “mistake.” We may even say, “I have done a bad thing.” It seems as if people have come to believe in their own innate goodness.
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A man arrested for the murder of a 12-year-old girl was also suspected of other killings. When police searched his computer, they found a file labeled “My Sins,” but it couldn’t be opened because it was protected with a password. A computer expert went to work using software to break the code. After 16 hours and billions of combinations, he found this password: “Godhelp.” The file detailed six brutal crimes, including rape and murder.
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Little Jeff was trying his best to save money to buy his mother a present. It was a terrible struggle because he gave in so easily to the temptation to buy goodies from the ice-cream man whenever the brightly colored van came through the neighborhood.
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Years ago we had a pet raccoon named Jason. One minute he would snuggle up on your lap like a perfect angel and the next he’d be engaged in the most fiendish antics. If unrestrained, he would raid the garbage can or tear up the flowerbed. Although he was a delightful pet, we became increasingly aware that his destructive actions were governed by his wild instincts. Jason would always have the nature of a raccoon, and we had to watch him closely no matter how tame he seemed to be.
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A group of students at Renaissance High School in Detroit decided to cut classes to attend a rock concert in Hart Plaza. They felt they had gotten away with it, but the next day when The Detroit News appeared on the newsstand, it carried a color photo of the concert—right there on the front page. And who was in that picture? That’s right—the delinquent students of Renaissance High, easily recognizable by anyone.
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How did everything get so dirty so fast?” I grumbled as I dusted the glass tabletop. “I had the whole house clean a month ago.”
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The prophet Hosea used the tribe of Ephraim as a poetic representation of the northern kingdom of Israel. In a colorful admonition, he wrote that Ephraim had become “a cake unturned” (Hosea 7:8).
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Two cockroaches decided to visit their favorite restaurant. While the larger of the two was enjoying his meal, the smaller one said,“You wouldn’t believe the house I just left. It was spotless. The lady had to be a cleanaholic. Everything was immaculate—the sink, the counter, the floors. You couldn’t find a crumb anywhere.”The other cockroach stopped his munching, looked with some annoyance at his companion, and said,“Do you have to talk like that while I’m eating?”
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I’ll never forget the painful lesson I learned in early childhood about disobedience. My father, who had been mowing our lawn, interrupted his work to go shopping. He left the push mower standing near some flowers and ordered me not to touch it while he was gone. But I disobeyed him and gave it a push. To my shock, the mower veered and knocked over several flowers.
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In August 1989, a major fire broke out under an elevated section of New Jersey’s Interstate 78. The intense heat buckled parts of the highway and forced the closing of the East Coast artery. The governor said it was the worst transportation crisis in years.
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God knows us better than we know ourselves. He’s aware of our weaknesses, the memories of sins that seem to predispose us to fail again and again. He knows our heredity and upbringing, the past and present influences that push us in the wrong direction. J. I. Packer calls these the “latent forces” of our existence as well as the “patent facts.”
At my stage of Christian growth, I struggle with attitudes and actions over which I seem to have little control. I identify with Dostoevsky, who said, “It is nature asserting its rights.” Paul called it “sin that dwells in me” (Romans 7:17). It has made me guilty of much, and capable of much more. That’s why my heart sometimes condemns me, even though I’m a believer.