What a Friend!
Soldiers who have fought together will tell you that the relational bond they share with their fellow soldiers is incredibly strong. In fact, some veterans report that the friendships they share with fellow veterans, although different in character, are as important to them as the relationship they have with their spouse. This doesn’t minimize the importance of marriage, but points to the depth of friendships forged in the crucible of sacrifice.
He Saw Something
It was with gut-wrenching horror that I watched the video of 21 Coptic Christians being forced to kneel on a Libyan beach before being beheaded by terrorists. Later, I learned that a relative of some of the men who were killed said that many of them cried out the name of Jesus with their dying breath—a testimony to their faith in Him. Though the terrorists had hoped for the opposite effect, they had actually strengthened the faith of the Coptic Church by proving that even imminent death couldn’t snatch away their brothers’ love for Christ!
Pain with a Purpose
I recently watched a viral video in which men were voluntarily subjected to pain similar to what women experience in childbirth. The men began the experiment in good spirits, joking around as electrodes were attached to their abdomens. But as the pain began and eventually increased, they started to grimace and wince in pain—eventually screaming and clutching each other’s hands for emotional support. As I watched the video, I thought about my own wife—the mother of our five kids—and couldn’t help but wonder: How do women endure that kind of suffering?
Powerful Patience
A few years ago, I drove to the Grand Canyon in the US. As we marveled at the natural beauty before us, we had to strain our eyes to see the little ribbon of water winding its way through the bottom of the massive canyon, one of the tributaries of the Colorado River. It was that tributary, some believe, that helped to patiently carve and make manifest the immense and majestic marvel we now viewed—the likes of which no human has ever been able to create!
Broken Down & Built Up
After winning the Masters in 1997, a pro golfer decided to change his swing, a decision that baffled golf experts. He wouldn’t win a major tournament for 2 years, but he eventually reestablished himself as the number one golfer in the world. The competitor asserted that unlearning his old swing was crucial, for he needed to get rid of bad habits in order to become a better golfer.
True Sacrifice
The Giving Pledge,” formed in 2009 by billionaire founders Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, is a campaign to encourage the world’s wealthiest people to give away most of their cash to help others. Buffett himself is taking the lead and plans to donate 99 percent of his wealth by the time he dies. This is an incredibly generous act! But it’s interesting to note that his present worth is $72.3 billion, meaning that if he gives away 99 percent of his wealth, he’ll still have $700 million remaining.
A Heart-Changing Gospel
In 1738, an Englishman named John Wesley entered a church service where someone was preaching from the book of Romans. As he listened to the message of the gospel that night, Wesley wrote that he felt his heart “strangely warmed,” and he knew deep within that Jesus had died to save him from his sins. John Wesley would go on to found Methodism, an approach to living out Christian faith that continues today.
No Lone Rangers
My country esteems “rugged individualism”—the idea that truly strong people do things on their own. The icon of this peculiar value was the Lone Ranger, a famous fictional cowboy of radio and the silver screen, and a solitary masked hero that protected others from harm. But it’s interesting to note that the Lone Ranger was hardly alone. He had a trusty horse named Silver and a constant companion named Tonto. Because of this, the supposedly “Lone” Ranger had more friends than many people do!
The Need to Remember
The Microsoft Corporation conducted a study on the human attention span, with somewhat funny and humiliating results. The researchers found that the modern person has an attention span of about 8 seconds, partly the result of the constant media bombardment that we endure on a regular basis. Compare this with the attention of a goldfish—9 seconds.
Knowing the Deeper Things
As scientists have continued to search the Mariana Trench, which lies 26,000 feet under the Pacific Ocean’s surface, they’ve discovered a new species of fish never seen before—one which researchers describe as a mix between a puppy, an angel, and an eel. It’s mind-boggling and humbling to think that even after so much time and effort has been spent trying to understand this planet, there’s still so much that we don’t know about all that God has created.
Loving God, Loving Others
While watching the orbit of Uranus, astronomers noticed that the planet didn’t seem to orbit as expected, almost as if there was another unknown planet nearby whose gravity was pulling Uranus toward it. Using mathematics, the scientists were able to compute both the position and the mass of this unknown object and then observed it for the first time in 1846: the previously unknown planet Neptune. Math allowed them to identify Neptune before they could even see it!
Resting in Jesus
American journalist James Surowiecki recently wrote this interesting quote:
Is Mary Really Right?
When I was in seventh grade, my math teacher showed me two separate lines that had arrows at their ends. One had the arrows pointed inward like this: >-<. The other had the arrows pointed outward like this: <->. My teacher asked me which of the two lines was longer and I answered that it was the one with the arrows pointed inward. He took out a ruler and measured them, showing me that they were identical in length! I took another look and—despite my teacher having just proved that they were the same length—stubbornly clung to the belief that my answer had been the right one.
Seeing God’s Heart
It may seem that modern, paved highways have always existed, but they’re a fairly recent invention. Intended to help people travel quickly and safely, they’re also a source of accidents and traffic jams. Many commuters lament the need to travel on highways—viewing them as an inconvenient and even dangerous part of modern life. What was designed to be a blessing is now viewed as a burden by these drivers.
The Trick of Misdirection
I recently watched a thought-provoking TED (Technology, Education, and Design) talk where a street magician spoke on the power of misdirection. Our brains have difficulty focusing on two things at once, and magicians exploit this by drawing our attention to one thing so that we won’t notice that they’re doing something else. In the video, the speaker so dazzled the audience with a series of magic tricks that they failed to realize that he had actually changed his clothes during the performance!
