Staying Alert

YOUR MIND IS A MUSCLE. It needs to be stretched to stay sharp. It needs to be prodded and pushed to perform. Let it get idle and lazy on you, and that muscle will become a pitiful mass of flab in a brief period of time. How can you stretch your mind? What are some good mental exercises that will keep the cobwebs away?

A Servant, Not a Celebrity

EVER WONDER if Jesus would have agreed to star in His own reality TV show? Let’s allow Him to answer in His own words: The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve others and to give his life as a ransom for many. (MARK 10:45) No mumbo jumbo. Just a straight-from-the-shoulder response. Jesus came to be a servant. Being a celebrity wasn’t in His DNA.

Fighting the Fast Fade

Can you remember those pointed challenges from the preacher who stood before you with Bible in hand? How many hours have passed since you sat there, opening your ears and heart to counsel from God’s always-relevant Book? A few dozen, maybe? Ah, it’s starting to fade, isn’t it? Those incisive, potentially life-changing principles are swimming away in a sea of forgetfulness. What a frustration! Why can’t we hang on to those mental, spiritual handholds we need so desperately?

Cracks in the Wall

The longer I live the less I know for sure. That sounds like 50% heresy . . . but it’s 100% honesty. In my younger years I had a lot more answers than I do now. Things were absolutely black and white, right or wrong, yes or no, in or out, but a lot of that is beginning to change. The more I travel and read and wrestle and think the less simplistic things seem.

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.

Famine

For us who are so well fed, the idea of famine is foreign—almost a fantasy. It’s something that plagues India or China, never America! Fear of famine doesn’t square with our “amber waves of grain,” our “fruited plains,” certainly not our streets lined with McDonalds, thirty-one flavors, and innumerable shops bulging with every conceivable type of food.

Roots

There’s this tree in my front yard that gives me fits several times a year. It leans. No, it never breaks or stops growing . . . it just leans. It’s attractive, deep green, nicely shaped, and annually bears fragrant blossoms. But let a good, healthy gust give it a shove—and over it goes. Like, fast.

Quietness

It is almost 10:00, Monday night. The children are snoozing and snoring upstairs (or they should be!). Aside from a few outside noises—a passing car . . . a barking dog . . . a few, faint voices in the distance—all’s quiet on the home front. That wonderful, much-needed presence has again come for a visit—quietness. Oh, how I love it . . . how I need it.

An Appraisal

Well, we are [five] months into the year. Throughout the past months we’ve reaffirmed the significance of pacing ourselves and not allowing the tyranny of the urgent to blind us to the value of the important. Well . . . how’s it going? Pause long enough to review and reflect as you answer these questions.

Wings

“Grab here, amigo.” I grabbed. “Hold on tight, por favor.” I held on. “When you come back toward the shore and I blow whistle, you pull cord pronto!” Within seconds I was airborne. A loud “whoosh,” a long strong jerk, and I was three hundred feet or so above the picturesque beach at Puerto Vallarta.

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