Finish Well

We have reached the end of another year and now face a new one. When we stood in this same spot 364 days ago, we looked ahead to what the Lord was going to teach us in the coming year and we anticipated the many ways we were going to see Him at work in our lives.

Resentment

Leo Held was a paragon of respectability. He was a middle-aged, hard-working lab technician who had worked at the same Pennsylvania paper mill for nineteen years. Having been a Boy Scout leader, an affectionate father, a member of the local fire brigade, and a regular church-goer, he was admired as a model in his community. Until . . .

Insight

Are you ready for a surprise? You blink twenty-five times every minute. Each blink takes you about one-fifth of a second. Therefore, if you take a ten-hour automobile trip, averaging forty miles per hour, you will drive twenty miles with your eyes closed.

Stumbling

Nothing damages our dignity like stumbling! I have seen people, dressed to the hilt, stumble and fall flat on their faces as they were walking to church. I have witnessed serious and gifted soloists, stepping up to the pulpit with music in hand, stumble and fall as the sheets of music sailed like maple leaves in an October breeze.

Trophies

He was brilliant. Clearly a child prodigy . . . the pride of Salzburg . . . a performer par excellence. At age five he wrote an advanced concerto for the harpsichord. Before he turned ten he had composed and published several violin sonatas and was playing from memory the best of Bach and Handel.

Helping

Think about being of assistance . . . your arm around the hunched shoulders of another . . . your smile saying “try again” to someone who’s convinced it’s curtains . . . your cup of cool water held up to a brother’s cracked lips, reassuring and reaffirming.

Heroes

Like silent shadows, the heroes of the faith pass beside us, pointing us toward the upward way, whispering words of courage. The memory of all those models of righteousness now gone from view puts needed steel in our spirit, prompting us to press forward, always forward.

Excuses

I’m a sports fan. I’m sure that comes as news to no one! For some strange reason, even when I was growing up, I could remember the most amazing details—okay, maybe “trivia” is a better word—about different ballplayers. You know, stuff nobody really cares to hear, but nevertheless sticks in my head . . . the way it does with most sports fans.

Who Cares?

Who really cared? His was a routine admission to busy Bellevue Hospital. A charity case, one among hundreds. A drunken bum from the Bowery with a slashed throat. The Bowery . . . last stop before the morgue.

On Patting Birds

In a cartoon strip some years ago a little guy was taking heat from his sister and friends for a newly found “calling”—patting birds on the head. The distressed birds would approach, lower their little feathered pates to be patted, sigh deeply, and walk away satisfied. It brought him no end of fulfillment—in spite of the teasing he took from others. “What’s wrong with patting birds on the head?” he wanted to know. “What’s wrong with it?” his embarrassed friends replied, “No one else does it!”