No Laughing Matter
As my wife and I were walking through a shopping mall, we came to a T-shirt stand. While browsing the shirts and their often humorous sayings, I noticed one with a disturbing message. It read, “So Many Christians, So Few Lions.” That shirt, with its reference to the first-century practice of throwing Christians to the lions in the Coliseum in Rome, wasn’t at all funny.
More Than Loaves
Seventeenth-century Quaker leader Isaac Pennington said, “The Lord has been teaching me to live upon Himself—not from anything received from Him, but upon the life itself.” The people in John 6 wanted to live off Jesus, but not for the same reason. It was not because their hearts were loyal to Him, but because their hearts were loyal to what they thought He could provide for them—namely, food and deliverance from Roman oppression.
A Special Virtue
In her book Food in Medieval Times, author Melitta Adamson writes of European culinary delights in the Middle Ages. Wild game, pastries, puddings, and other exotic foods illustrate the creative joy taken in food preparation. But with all these wonderful entrées there was a problem—overeating. This tendency was compounded by the Christian calendar, which abounded with fasts and feasts. Abstaining from meals was often followed by gluttony.
Aim High
When my daughter and her family were in town for a visit, I had a chance to take my son and two sons-in-law out for a “guy” outing.
God’s Presence At Church
I love reading church slogans. You know, the ones you see on the marquee in front of churches. Recently I noticed a slogan that said, “Come in and experience the presence of God.” That one caught my attention, primarily because it’s an important promise to make and sometimes a hard promise to keep. Hard, because if we’re not careful our churches might reflect the presence of its people more than the presence of our God.
Toxic Look-Alikes
Our yard makes poison ivy happy. I learned this the hard way. Even though I was being careful, I came in contact with the plant and ended up with a nasty, itchy rash.
First Impressions
A while back, Our Daily Bread published an article I wrote about a young woman who wore a T-shirt that said, “Love Is for Losers.” In it, I commented on what a sad message that was, and I wrote about the hurt this motto represented.
Hoarding Or Helping?
In August 1914, when Britain entered World War I, Oswald Chambers was 40 years old with a wife and a 1-year-old daughter. It wasn’t long before men were joining the army at the rate of 30,000 a day, people were asked to sell their automobiles and farm horses to the government, and lists of the dead and wounded began appearing in daily newspapers. The nation faced economic uncertainty and peril.
Still Going
The Energizer Bunny can’t top the Service Partners of RBC Ministries. RBC, the publishers of Our Daily Bread, has a volunteer program called Service Partners that gives people the opportunity to donate their skills and time—helping us accomplish our mission “to make the life-changing wisdom of the Bible understandable and accessible to all.”
