Tuesday, November 27, 2007

Symbols of The Greater Christmas Gift

Andrew Wyermann writes...

At a Christmas celebration in a nursing home, I asked the folks to tell us about their favorite Christmas experience. The group seemed to light up. Spontaneously one by one they told their Christmas story. Each was different except in one respect. Every experience was taken from their childhood.

They did not remember Christmas as a parent, but as a child. Then I turned the question on myself. I, too, returned to my childhood.

The first, and perhaps most memorable, experience I recalled took place when I was seven years old. Early Christmas Eve, my mother took my brother and me out for a treat. It was her way to get us out of our fifth-floor apartment in the Bronx while my father prepared for the evening festivity. As we climbed the stairs back to the apartment, the shrill sound of a whistle filled the hallway. What was that, and where did it come from? Our pace quickened and a second burst of the whistle could be heard. We dashed into the apartment. There was my father playing engineer with the biggest Lionel train ever made. It was so magnificent, so unexpected, so wonderful!

Some fifty years later, I still have the train set and cherish it as much as any material gift I ever received from my parents. The train is a warm reminder of the greater gift my parents gave me. This gift has nothing to do with any material advantages, or even with any piece of sage advice. Unconditional love was their gift. I never doubted their care for me, and from such grace sprang my own capacity to truth.

It was years later that I fully understood the gift my parents gave me had its source in God's gift of the Child to us all.

The sound of the whistle and the song of the angels have become one and the same. They are both the signal of God's love.

One Worth Saving

In the life of Dr. Moody Stewart the story is told that, when a boy, he was greatly surprised one day to find all the sheep in the field standing close in a circle with their faces outward.

Two foxes had run off with two lambs and the sheep at once drove the lambs together and formed a circle around them for their defense.

A gentleman commenting on this story recalls the fact that wild horses and wild deer do that when attacked by wolves.

Sheep were probably once quite wild, and in their wild state they were far stronger and braver than they are now. In great danger their original nature rushes upon them and arms them for the defense of their lambs. If the sheep risk their lives for the sake of their lambs, surely the Good Shepherd will defend His own.

Again and again He tells us that He laid down His life for the sheep. His sheep were lost in the wilderness, ready to perish, and He went into the wilderness to seek and to save them. And He considers even one sheep well worth saving. He leaves the ninety and nine in the fold, and goes after the one that has strayed.

He cares for each as if it were His one ewe lamb.

Zingers by Croft - November 27, 2007

The birth of Christ brought God to man, but it took the cross of Christ to bring man to God.

Jesus can change the foulest sinner into the finest saint.

Jesus: not a law-giver, a life-giver.

To face Christ as judge is to know him as a friend.

We may love Jesus too little, but we can never love him too much.

Thursday, November 15, 2007

Licking the Blade

Paul Harvey tells how an Eskimo kills a wolf. He coats his knife blade with blood and lets it freeze. Then he adds another coat of blood and then another. As each coat freezes he adds another smear of blood until the blade is hidden deep within a substantial thickness of frozen blood.

Then he buries the knife—blade up—in the frozen tundra. The wolf catches the scent of fresh blood and begins to lick it. He licks it more and more feverishly until the blade is bare. Then he keeps on licking harder and harder. Because of the cold he never notices the pain of the blade on his tongue. His craving for the taste of blood is so great that he does not realize his thirst is being satisfied by his own blood. He licks the blade till he bleeds to death, swallowing his own life.

That is the way the devil works on us. He gives us a taste of sin, knowing we will crave more. We go deeper and deeper in satisfying our desires.

We never notice the blade inside till it is too late. Only when we are dying do we realize we have swallowed our own life in sin.

“He Knows Everything about My Life”

When Justin Armour was a rookie wide receiver with the Buffalo Bills, some veteran teammates invited him to a preseason party. Justin went, and couldn’t believe what he saw: Gorgeous women everywhere, offering free sex to any of the guys who wanted it.

“It was the most eye-opening experience I’ve ever had,” Justin says. “I had heard about things like this, but I was so naive. I got out of there as fast as I could!”

As a single Christian guy, Justin had committed to saving sex for marriage. To do so, he knows he’s got to run from temptation.

“I’d rather not have my mind polluted by those things. Once you’ve been in a couple situations where’s there’s temptation, you learn how to avoid them and you don’t go back.”

Justin also calls his best friend and accountability partner, Steve Stenstrom.

“You need someone to hold you accountable for walking with Christ,” says Justin. “Steve does that for me. He knows everything about my life, good and bad, and there’s nothing he won’t hold me accountable for.”

—Mark Moring, editor of Men of Integrity. Men of Integrity, Vol. 1, no. 1.
See: Ecclesiastes 4:10: 1 Samuel 20.

Zingers by Croft Pentz - November 15, 2007

Few speed records are broken when people run from temptation.

When you meet temptation, turn to the right.

Nothing makes temptation so easy as being broke.

God always tests us to bring out the best; Satan tempts us to bring out the worst.

When you feel you are free from temptation, be on your guard.

Buy the Book of Zingers by Croft Pentz Here

Friday, November 2, 2007

Kindness to Strangers (by Gordon MacDonald)

[My wife] Gail and I were in an airplane, seated almost at the back. As the plane loaded up, a woman with two small children came down the aisle to take the seat right in front of us. And behind her, another woman. The two women took the A and C seats, one of the children sat in the middle seat, and the second child was on the lap of one of the women. I figured these were two mothers traveling together with their kids, and I hoped the kids wouldn’t be noisy.

The flight started, and my prayer wasn’t answered. The air was turbulent, the children cried a lot—their ears hurt—and it was a miserable flight. I watched as these two women kept trying to comfort these children. The woman at the window played with the child in the middle seat, trying to make her feel good and paying lots of attention.

I thought, Boy, these women get a medal for what they are doing. But things went downhill from there. Toward the last part of the flight, the child in the middle seat got sick. The next thing I knew she was losing everything from every part of her body. The diaper wasn’t on tight, and before long a stench began to rise through the cabin. It was unbearable!

I could see over the top of the seat that stuff you don’t want me to describe was all over everything. It was on this woman’s clothes. It was all over the seat. It was on the floor. It was one of the most repugnant things I had seen in a long time.

The woman next to the window patiently comforted the child and tried her best to clean up the mess and make something out of a bad situation. The plane landed, and when we pulled up to the gate all of us were ready to exit that plane as fast as we could. The flight attendant came up with paper towels, handed them to the woman in the window seat, and said, “Here ma’am, these are for your little girl.”

The woman said, “This isn’t my little girl.”

“Aren’t you traveling together?”

“No, I’ve never met this woman and these children before in my life.”

Suddenly, I realized I had just seen mercy lived out. A lot of us would have just died in this circumstance. This woman found the opportunity to give mercy. She was, in the words of Christ, “The person who was the neighbor.”

—Gordon MacDonald, “Pointing to Jesus: Generosity,” Leadership, Vol. 21, no. 3.
See: Psalms 41:1; Matthew 5:7; Luke 10:25-37

Mystery of the Unexploded Shells

In his book, The Fall of Fortresses, Elmer Bendiner tells of a B-17 Flying Fortress flying a bombing mission over Germany toward the end of World War II. It took several direct hits from Nazi anti-aircraft guns; a few actually hit the fuel tank. Miraculously, the crippled aircraft made it back without exploding or running out of fuel.

After landing, 11 unexploded 20 millimeter shells were carefully removed from the bomber’s fuel tank! Each was dismantled and examined. All 11 were empty of explosive material. A small note was found inside one of the shells, handwritten in Czech. Translated, it read, “This is all we can do for you now.”

A member of the Czech underground, working in a Nazi munitions factory, had deliberately omitted the explosives in at least 11 of the shells on his assembly line. He slipped the note into one of the shells, hoping that someone who benefited from his efforts might discover why. That same person may have died wondering if the quiet work he was doing to subvert the enemy war machine would ever make any difference to the outcome of the war. A Flying Fortress crew had him to thank for their lives.


05MENUSA: Men of Integrity, 1 Year Magazine Subscription, USA

Charles R. Swindoll, quoted in Men of Integrity, Vol. 3, no. 6.
See: Matthew 24:45-51; 1 Corinthians 12; Revelation 2:10

Zingers by Croft - November 2, 2007

Luck is when preparation meets opportunity.

Keeping your eye too closely on the future may obscure present opportunities.

Opportunities, like parking places, are plentiful for those who get there first.

There is no security on earth, only opportunity.

Those who look for opportunities to hate miss many opportunities to love.

Buy the Book of Zingers by Croft Pentz Here