stealing vs. working
When my twin sister and I were 5 years old, we began counting the money we had in our piggybanks. It turned out that one of us had more than the other. To our young minds, this just wasn’t right. So, we decided to balance our accounts by helping ourselves to our mother’s money!
run
I was 7 years old when I was first exposed to pornography. Some kids had found it, and I naively agreed when they offered to show it to me. In today’s digital world, the stakes are much higher. More than a frozen picture in time, the power of video erodes what little innocence remains in our world.
blameless
Pastor guilty of bilking money from elderly woman . . . Church elder convicted of accounting fraud . . . Pastor of megachurch accused of financial misappropriation.
tower of...books
Marta Minujin created an 82-foot tall sculpture of the Tower of Babel in the Plaza San Martin in Buenos Aires. The artist made it using over 30,000 donated books written in nearly every world language. Inside the turret, visitors could hear a recording of Minujin’s voice pronouncing the word book in various languages. She said her mission was to “unite all people.”
honesty is required
Their sin ruined the moment. Like a brawl at a wedding or a bitter argument during an office party, their selfish act brought the party to a halt. The new church had been an exhilarating community of love. “All the believers were united in heart and mind” and they “shared everything they had.” “Those who owned land or houses would sell them and bring the money to the apostles to give to those in need” (Acts 4:32-35).
good conflict
Many Christians are masters at conflict-avoidance. Perhaps we confuse “blessed are the peacemakers” (Matthew 5:9) with “blessed are those who avoid unpleasant situations.” But conflict and confrontation weave their way throughout the fabric of the Bible.
guilty as charged
I recently read of the acquittal of a teenage girl who had been accused of blasphemy under her country’s strict blasphemy laws. If she had been convicted, she would have been imprisoned for life. It was found, however, that a religious teacher had promoted false evidence to frame her.
truth in love
Have you said something to someone that you later regretted? Perhaps you needed to speak hard words, and the person needed to hear them, but you feel bad because of the way you communicated your message. So you’re saddened that you failed to “speak the truth in love.” But what does that really mean? Is it about honesty? Is it about sweetening the cold, hard truth to make it more palatable?
a private problem
Pastor. Husband. Father. Sex addict.
seller beware
Every buyer is also a seller. If I buy apples from you, then you’re selling your apples and “buying” my money, while I am “selling” my money to buy your apples. For every time you make a purchase, you must give up something to make the transaction. If you have nothing to sell, there’s nothing you can buy.
true value
Johannes Gutenberg had an idea that would change the world, but he needed money to finance it. He contacted his neighbor, Johann Fust, who loaned him the cash to build his first printing press. Gutenberg initially made his loan payments by printing indulgences for the Catholic Church. The job paid well, but Gutenberg had higher hopes for his new machine. He wanted to print Bibles—magnificent books with Gothic letters that resembled a scribe’s meticulous style. But his 1,200-page Bibles took too long to produce and sell, and in 3 years he was bankrupt. Gutenberg handed his press over to Fust, who used it to publish a wide variety of books throughout Germany and France.
being salt and light
Tehal Dosanjh was walking by a bank late one evening, when he found $16,000 in cash outside the bank’s dropbox. The bank was closed, so Dosanjh picked up the pile of bills. “I was shocked,” he said. “I knew what I had to do the next morning, which was to return it.”
Remarkably, he did just that. The next day,…
practical holiness
Holiness is perhaps one of the most misunderstood terms of our time. A study by The Barna Group reveals that though the Bible talks a lot about holiness, most people are confused and even apprehensive about what it means.
Pastor Ray Stedman observed, “Most of us associate [holiness] with some kind of grimness or solemnity. We think holy people are…
unexpected journeys
Unexpected journeys. Little and big—life is full of them. A quick trip to the grocery store turns into a car accident, injuries, and several months of recuperation. A routine drive home from work turns into a breakdown on the highway and a lengthy wait for a tow truck. A call on the cell phone turns into the news that someone…
tweaked
One Web-based company creates and sells personalized lies. For a few hundred dollars, this company helps job-seekers create phony references for résumés, and then provides telephone operators to verify the bogus information. While most of us would never dream of lying so brazenly, statistics show that approximately 30 percent of job-seekers exaggerate or embellish aspects of their résumés. This makes…
