The outstanding Christian author, John Powell, related this account of his father’s death. He was weeping in the hospital and one of the nurses tried to console him. He explained to her, “I’m not weeping because my father died (the man was in great pain and death was a release). I cry because he never told me he loved me.”
It’s too late for John Powell and his father, but it may not be...
Material things can blind us to the true values in life. In the Franklin County Courthouse in Virginia is preserved the will of the man who owned Booker T. Washington as a slave. Since most of his property was in slaves, the owner had listed them by name with his property and set down a price by each one of them. Opposite the name of Booker T. Washington was marked $200.
Was this the fa...
Willy Sutton was a noted bank robber and escape artist. He was a tough Irish kid born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1902. He began his life of crime pilfering small things and then moved to breaking and entering and eventually to robbing banks. In his lifetime he robbed more than 100 banks and served several prison sentences, including a stint in Sing-Sing. He also managed to escape from three of t...
William Wilberforce, the British statesman and reformer, at the end of his life confessed to his son Henry, “I’m in a very distressed state.”
“Yes,” Henry replied, “but you have your feet on the Rock.”
When times of distress and trouble come, and they come to all of us, it’s time to check your foundation. What are you standing on today?
The only adequate foundation f...
There is nothing more common nor more detrimental to marriage than an irritable, quarrelsome, critical spirit. It is so ordinary because it takes no brains, no talent, and no self-denial. It is so detrimental because it makes life miserable for everyone. The Bible warns us against this when it says, “Husbands, love your wives, and be not bitter [irritable, quarrelsome, critical] against them” (...
While visiting Hong Kong years ago I asked our guide about his religious faith. He replied, “I’m a free thinker.” I asked a missionary friend what that meant. She said, “He has rejected the gods of his ancestors and now wants to be the god of his own life.”
We have become a nation of free thinkers in America. We’ve elbowed God out of the center of our lives and taken over ourselves. As...
In his book, Trial by Ordeal, Craig Parshall tells of a conversation between Tess and Kevin. A homeless man has died and Kevin felt no responsibility for him. Then Tess reminds him of A Christmas Carol by Dickens where a ghost comes to Scrooge’s door and tells him, “Mankind is your business.”
Then she tells Kevin, “This man is a part of your responsibility. It’s a part...
At the close of his early Los Angeles crusade a fellow minister said of Billy Graham, “I believe he has set the church back 50 years.” Graham who never answered his critics replied in jest, “I supposed I have failed. I intended to set the church back 2,000 years.”
Believing the simple Christian faith is an offense to some. They say, “To hold on to the old-time religion in our modern...
In a day of easy credit, we must beware of too much debt. A man and his wife went to a financial advisor for help with their finances. The man told a friend, “The advisor recommended plastic surgery – that we cut up our credit cards.” That would solve a lot of financial problems. By the way, a man told me that his wife’s credit cards were stolen, by a thief. I asked if he had reported it. ...