Others First
As my sister reads books, she regularly highlights sentences and jots down notes in the margins. One day, while riding a train, she was underlining a passage when she overheard a mother reprimanding her child for doodling in a book. My sister quickly put her pen away, not wanting the toddler to ignore her mother’s words by following her example. The child simply wasn’t capable of understanding the difference between a book loaned from the library and a purchased copy—the difference between vandalism and making personal notes in the margin.
The Who of Prayer
If you watch Orthodox Jews pray at the Wailing Wall of Jerusalem, you might wonder about the leather band wrapped around their forearms and the box strapped to their heads. The objects are called the tefillin, worn during a prayer ritual that some believe dates back to the time of Moses (Deuteronomy 6:6-8). The process to don the tefillin is very elaborate and must be performed in an exacting manner. This illustrates that in Jesus’ time, Jewish prayer was very focused on the “how”—praying in a specific way.
Hearing Loss
According to the World Health Organization, more than a billion young people are at risk of hearing loss because of personal audio devices and damaging levels of sound at some entertainment venues, where noise levels can top 120 decibels for hours on end! Doctors warn that a steady onslaught of loud noise, particularly through earbuds, is damaging the hearing ability of a generation.
Justice and Mercy
In the wake of the devastating earthquake that destroyed much of Haiti in 2010, one philosopher wrote, “For those who believe in an all-good, all-powerful God, we’ve seen that they face a question that remains pressing after all these centuries, and which is now horribly underscored by the horrors in Haiti. If a deity exists, why didn’t he prevent this?”
Rewards
When our children were young, my wife and I gave them money to buy Christmas presents for us. Why not simply buy the socks or slippers ourselves? Because it meant a great deal to our kids. They wanted to give as well as receive presents, even if it meant using our money.
Another Option
The film Bridge of Spies tells the true story of a lawyer who was selected by his government to defend an arrested foreign spy. As the lawyer strived for a fair trial, he found himself caught in a moral quandary. With both countries standing on the brink of nuclear war, his government wasn’t interested in a rigorous defense. They simply wanted the spy convicted and sent to the electric chair.
He Will Handle It
When I take my kids to a playground, they tumble out of the car and race to the swings or slides. I usually sit on a bench with my purse, containing important medicine, close by. The meds aren’t for me; they’re for my daughter. She has a health condition that can go from bad to worse in seconds. I carry her meds because I don’t want her to have to think about them while she’s playing. How could she dangle from the monkey bars while holding her EpiPen auto-injectors? How could she grasp the metal ropes of a swing while juggling a medication bag?
Always Loved
In spite of my many fatherly mess-ups (and lately I feel as if I’ve had more than a few), my deepest hope for my two sons is that they will know I love them, and that my love comes from God. If you want to prod me to tears, get me to talk about my hopes for my sons. There are few places where I could feel more anxiety than when I consider the uncertain future: Will they grow up to be good men? Will they follow truth and life? But what I do know, without doubt, is that I love my boys fiercely—that I have always done so and will always love them.
Run with It!
Siobhan Dowd, a British author of young adult novels, died of cancer at age 47. After her death another author, Patrick Ness, was commissioned to finish one of her unpublished stories. A Monster Calls was published in 2011. It was a stunning success, winning both the Kate Greenaway and the Carnegie Medals, prestigious book awards in the UK. In the introduction, Ness says, “I felt—and feel—as if I’ve been handed a baton, like a particularly fine writer has given me her story and said, ‘Go. Run with it.’ ”
Sacrificial Love
Charlie has given up everything to care for Sarah. The life they knew has slowly deteriorated with Sarah’s early onset of Alzheimer’s. Charlie has rearranged his schedule to more effectively care for her. He cooks, cleans, bathes, administers medicine, and makes sure Sarah is able to get to and from the bathroom even when her body fails. He cherishes her in sickness, health, disappointment, and frailty. Great love drives him to selflessly give up his life for her whether she knows it or not.
Autograph of the Ordinary
From overhead, a security camera captured an unseen force as it buckled the floor of the National Corvette Museum in the US. Suddenly a sinkhole yawned from below, devouring several prized sports cars. Among the buried vehicles was the one-millionth Corvette ever produced.
The Gift of Love
Psychologists and counselors agree that one’s observable actions of another person, not just his or her spoken or written words, provide the evidence that the person truly loves you. We’ve heard it over and over that God is love (1 John 4:8), and that He loves us with an unfailing love (Jeremiah 31:3; Ephesians 2:4). But how can we be sure that God’s love is real?
Warm Welcomes
I’ve written before about a raucous nightclub that opened across the street from my family’s home in Uganda—causing us to move out before we had a new place to live. The unexpected and challenging experience—moving from the stable house and community we had lived in for seven consecutive years—led to a state of ongoing transition. We ultimately ended up settling in a community where we knew no one, and had to start over from scratch.
In the Gap
A pastor went to a local coffee shop and placed a sign that read “Free Prayer” on his table. Soon a customer asked the minister to pray for a need. Since then, the pastor has gone to a coffee shop weekly to intercede for others. Some pour out their hearts, such as a man whose wife had left him and who had lost several friends and family to death. Regarding this man and others, the pastor states, “Sometimes we have to move beyond the shadows of a steeple to take care of our people.”
Confession and Blessing
Agriculture is a vital sector in the South African economy. So when it was blighted by a harsh drought in 2015, it seemed that the entire nation mobilized in earnest prayer and drastic action. When ordinary people saw heartbreaking images of starving animals and desperate farmers on TV, they filled water bottles and drove hundreds of kilometers to deliver them to the thirsty. Farmers who had grain and hay bales stocked their trucks and shared with those in need. When calamity struck, the community sought God and rallied for much-needed relief.
