Citizens

It is very difficult to become a citizen of Liechtenstein. That's true even if you were born there. First there must be a referendum held in your village. If you pass that test you must be voted on by the Prime Minister and his cabinet. Only then can you become a citizen. It rarely happens. There are people in Liechtenstein who...

Bearing Fruit

The bitternut tree does not bear fruit every year. It only bears fruit every three years and sometimes only every five years. The beech tree bears fruit every eight years. The white oak can go ten years without bearing fruit. But the champion in delay is the bamboo which bears fruit only every 120 years! Most Christians don't...

Atheism

Thank God I'm An Atheist is the title of a little book by Rudolph Brasch. He said he got the title from a reported exchange between a disbeliever and a heckler at the famous Speaker's Corner in Hyde Park in London. The contradiction of the statement is obvious. It is as obvious as the true story of the atheist father who was...

Stewardship

"Only those who love the Church," Wallace M. Alston, Jr. of Princeton, NJ's Nassau Presbyterian Church observed, "and believe in that for which it stands can be expected to support it with their stewardship. If Christians do not direct a good portion of their stewardship to the life and work of the Church, no one else will -- not...

Second Chances

In the 1929 Rose Bowl, Georgia Tech went against UCLA. It was a terrific football game. A player for UCLA by the name of Roy Riegels recovered a fumble in the first half of play and raced for the goal line. The only problem was he went the wrong way. Fortunately, one of his teammates tackled him just short of the goal or...

Positive Attitude

I love the story of the second grader named Mike. On the way to school Mike's arm bumped against a seat on the bus and it made a big scrape and bled until blood got all over his clothes, He had forgotten to put his homework paper in his book bag so he got in trouble. At recess he was hit in the mouth and lost two teeth. After ...

Life

Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, made the newspapers recently and it wasn't even Groundhog Day. Did you read about Donald Wyman? He was by himself in the woods when he was pinned down by a falling tree. There was no way to get free. There was no one to help. With nothing but his pocket knife, he amputated his...

Details

Thomas Nicely's life was going pretty well at Lynchburg College. He was a math professor in this small college in a small town. And he liked the life very much. He loved math and theoretical research. One day Thomas took his new computer with the blazing fast pentium chip in it and did a little division. One day he asked this...

The Rescuing Power Of The Cross

One cold early evening Eros and Bartie Savage motored out into San Francisco Bay in their cabin cruiser to share a picnic dinner. They saw a college rowing team and waved to them. The water was very choppy that afternoon, but they continued toward the San Mateo Bridge. They sought passage through the drawbridge, but ...

Conformity

Someone has said that every person is born an original and dies a copy. Life is often a gradual process of whittling away our distinctiveness until we are...