April 26

“I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts.“ (Abraham Lincoln)

“I was asked to pray for our Congress, but I looked at the Congress and prayed for our country.” (adapted, Edward Hale)

“Take courage. We walk in the wilderness today and in the Promised Land tomorrow.” (D L Moody)

The economy is bad for the mob. Yesterday, they had to lay off three politicians.

Have you thought..... If someone could invent the microwave television set, we could watch a one hour show in six minutes.

The focus of the eyes reveals the desire of the heart.

“Do not have your concert first and then tune your instrument afterwards. Begin the day with the Word of God and prayer, and go first of all into harmony with Him.” (Hudson Taylor)

These are all by Thomas Paine, from his Common Sense (1776):
(1) “Tyranny, like Hell, is not easily conquered.”
(2) “The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.”
(3) “What we obtain too cheaply we esteem too lightly.”
(4) “It is dearness only that gives everything its value.”

Question. What was the first incoming call on Alexander Graham Bell‘s new telephone? Answer. “Alex, this is your mother, why haven’t you called?”

"Like fire, money itself is neither good nor evil. It is neutral, its character determined by the eye of the perceiver, the hand of the user." - Jerrold Mundis,

Only 42 percent of Americans have calculated how much money it will take to retire. - Source: U.S. Department of Labor

"When the heart is not being fascinated, when the heart is not being won over, it will pursue anything to move it and is therefore ripe for the seeds of compromise to be planted." - Dwayne Roberts, One Thing

"Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than going to a garage makes you an automobile." - Billy Sunday

Nearly a third of public high school students in the United States will not graduate. - Source: Newsweek (April 17, 2006)

What a wonderful life I've had! I only wish I'd realized it sooner.

Heaven is a gated community.


We keep chasing after stuff. We're somehow convinced that if we could just have more somehow, if we could have what we wanted, if we own something, possess something, that somehow our lives would be happier. One researcher has suggested that every seven seconds you're given the message that your life is valued, it's measured, based on your stuff. What we have, what we own, how we present that to others is a measure of who we are as people. So we get into that trap. A person by the age of 20 has seen over a million commercials, and they're designed to say to you that you're not fulfilled yet, you're not content, your life doesn't have what it needs but you could have it. So we end up chasing that in a way that often gets us into a ton of trouble.
A recent study showed that if the 6 billion people who lived on the planet consumed goods the ways Americans consume goods, it would take 4 planets our size to provide the resources. Are we ever satisfied? Is money the problem? Money isn't the problem; it's symptomatic of a problem. You're the problem.

Seen on a birthday card:
Forget about the past, You can't change it.
Forget about the future, You can't predict it.
Inside: Forget about the present, I didn't buy you one.

A religion without mystery must be a religion without God. Jeremy Taylor
A sign posted on the wall of an Army mess read: "Don't Waste Food -- Food will win the war."

Beneath someone had written: "That's fine, but how do we get the enemy to eat it?"

Jesus did not command the whole world to go to church. Jesus commanded his church to go to the whole world.

The gospels of the New Testament do not demand that we understand Christ. Rather, they offer the burden-lightening insight that Christ understands us. We do not have to understand Easter to experience Easter.

The presence of Christ among us does not depend upon the quality of our understanding of Christ or even upon the nature of our reception of his presence. Christ appears in the midst of people not even looking for Him. C. Welton Gaddy,

Not Paradise People: Garrison Keillor once said, in one of his famous Prairie Home Companion soliloquies, "My people are not Paradise people. We've lived in Minnesota all of our lives and it has taken a lot out of us. My people aren't sure they'll even like paradise: not sure perfection is all its cracked up to be. My people will arrive in heaven and stand just inside the gate, shuffling around. It's a lot bigger than I thought it was going to be, they might say. We'll say, "No thank you, we can't stay for eternity, we'll just sit and have a few minutes of bliss and then we have to get back!" Garrison Keillor, Prairie Home Companion


Surprised by Joy Few authors have shared the good news of the Christian gospel as compellingly as C.S. Lewis in the Chronicles of Narnia. In one passage the characters Eustace, Jill and Aslan weep over the dead King Caspian. After Aslan is wounded with a pierced paw and his blood splashes on the dead king the king is wonderfully revived; "his sunken cheeks grew round and fresh, and the wrinkles were smoothed, and his eyes opened, and his eyes and lips both laughed, and suddenly he leaped up and stood before them—a very young man, or a boy." When he turns to the children, he gives a "great laugh of astonished joy."
When Aslan is asked if Caspian hadn’t died, the great lion speaks in a voice that sounds like laughter. "He has died. Most people have, you know. Even I have. There are very few who haven’t." The resurrection invites laughter. The kind of laughter we sometimes experience when something so impossible happens we can do nothing else but laugh.

We Have Become Dull
"If a dead man is raised to life, all men spring up in astonishment. Yet every day one that had no being is born, and no man wonders, though it is plain to all, without doubt, that it is a greater thing for that to be created which was without being than for that which had being to be restored. Because the dry rod of Aaron budded, all men were in astonishment; every day a tree is produced from the dry earth ... and no man wonders ... Five thousand men were filled with five loaves; every day the grains of seed that are sown are multiplied in a fullness of ears, and no man wonders. All wondered to see water once turned into wine. Every day the earth's moisture, being drawn into the root of the vine, is turned by the grape into wine, and no man wonders. Full of wonder then are all the things which men never think to wonder at, because they are by habit become dull to the consideration of them. " St. Gregory the Great, Moralia (translated: Morals on the Book of Job, 1844–50). Gregory I (540–604) is a Catholic Saint and was Pope (590–604).


A Time of Transition
Years ago the Standard Oil Company changed its name from ESSO to EXXON. Perhaps you remember the public campaign. For months, the famous “put a tiger in your tank” tiger was pictured on a large sign climbing a stepladder to the top of the local gas station’s ESSO sign. With a big smile on his face, the tiger held in his arms the new EXXON sign. Then one day, Standard Oil stations across America no longer had their old ESSO signs, but new EXXON signs. It was a clever campaign. If the new EXXON signs just showed up one day without any warning everyone would have been confused. “What happened to the ESSO station?,” people would have wondered. It took a time of transition.
In the early church it took time for Jesus’ followers to realize that the post-Easter Jesus, the Risen Jesus, was the Jesus they knew in Galilee, but also different in important ways. That’s what the resurrection appearances in Matthew, Luke and John are for. They helped those first disciples recognize the post-Easter Jesus. Before Easter they knew him by the sound of his voice, the muscle of his arm, the stride of his gait. After Easter they would learn to recognize Jesus in new ways.

"If we don't know WHAT is beyond the grave we do know WHO is beyond the grave." - William Sloane Coffin


Do You Believe
Do you believe that John F. Kennedy was shot and killed? Probably all of us say yes. Anybody here in Dallas and see it happen? At the hospital when he was pronounced dead? We do have videotape though. But what about Abraham Lincoln? No videotape. No eyewitnesses alive now. Do you believe Lincoln was assassinated? Of course. Reliable history.
Based on all the evidence of the eyewitnesses, the historians, what happened afterward and to this day there is only one logical reasonable answer to the resurrection story. It actually happened. Jesus actually rose from the dead. Any other explanation just doesn’t make sense.
Is it a Sin…?
Sociologist and evangelist Tony Campolo once spoke to a group and asked this question, "Is it a sin to own a BMW?" Then he added, "If Jesus had forty thousand dollars, would He buy a BMW or use that to feed or house the needy in the Third World?" Wow, that's a tough one. That's the kind of question we would prefer not to even think about. People get crucified for asking questions like that. It's a challenging question, even a disturbing one. One woman, however, was so struck by Campolo's talk that she wrote his ministry a check for the same amount that she paid for her new custom drapes. Her gift built three houses in Haiti.
It is so easy in this affluent society for us to forget who we are and what Christ has called us to be. It is so easy for us to become so preoccupied with our work, with our family, with our own needs that we forget our essential call to feed Christ's sheep.

Value of a Smile
The following came from an ad regarding teeth whitener:
1. Over 92% of the American population gains first impressions based on one's smile.
2. Smiling releases endorphins and makes us feel better.
3. A newborn shows a preference for a smiling face over a non-smiling face.
4. A smiling person is judged to be more pleasant, attractive, sincere, sociable, and competent than a non-smiling person.