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Everyone put your hand out. Imagine with me that you have a lemon in your hand. Feel how cold it is since you just took it out of the refrigerator. Feel the two knobs on the ends? Ok, now take a knife and cut the lemon in half. Careful! Don’t cut yourself. Oh, look at the juice run down over the sides. Now, put one half down and just hold the other half of the lemon. Now, look at the inside of the cut lemon. Lean down and smell the lemon. Get a good full sense of the lemon fresh scent of the just cut lemon. Ok, now squeeze the lemon. See the juice ooze up and cover the surface of the cut lemon? Now - lick the lemon. That’s right! Lick the lemon. Ok, who feels like you have more saliva than you did a minute a go? How can that be? It was only pretend! The reason is because your body reacts to that which your mind thinks about.
Can it be that the average person spends one-fifth of his or her life talking? That’s what the statistics say. If all of our words were put into print, the result would be this: a single day’s words would fill a 50-page book, while in a year’s time the average person’s words would fill 132 books of 200 pages each! Among all those words there are bound to be some spoken in anger, carelessness, or haste. Today in the Word, June 15, 1992.
Paul Little made this observation “I was frustrated out of my mind, trying to figure out the will of God. I was doing everything but getting into the presence of God and asking Him to show me.”
REMEMBERING JOSEPH BAU--COMMUNION MEDITATION
When someone dies, we remember—we remember all the stories that filled their life. Last week a man named Joseph Bau died. It’s a name you probably don’t know, but a story worth hearing.
Joseph Bau was born on June 18, 1920, in Krakow, Poland. He became a young man just in time to experience the German invasion of Poland. He was one of three boys in a prosperous middle-class family that lived in one of the wealthiest neighborhoods. Joseph had always been good at art, and at the age of 18, he enrolled in the University of Plastic Arts at Krakow.
But the war interrupted his studies. His family was forced to move to the Jewish Ghetto, and then later to the Plaschow concentration camp. Because of Joseph’s partial education in Art before the war, and because of his talent for Gothic lettering, the Nazis employed him in producing maps and signs for the camp.
Joseph’s job also enabled him to save more than 400 Jews by forging false documents and identity papers that secured their release from the camp. When asked after the war, why he did not forge documents for himself, he replied, “Then who would have done it for the other Jews?”
When Jesus was hanging on the cross, we hear a similar question, “He saved others; He cannot save himself?” And Jesus answers, “What shall ...
A.W. TOZAR: Contemplating the fact that more than 10,000 thoughts a day pass between our ears, ’Our thoughts not only reveal what we are, they predict what we will become. We will soon be the sum total of our thoughts’. The Holy Spirit uses the nourishment of the Word of God to rewrite our computer and renew our minds.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt got tired of smiling that big smile and saying the usual things at all those White House receptions. So, one evening he decided to find out whether anybody was paying attention to what he was saying. As each person came up to him with extended hand, he flashed that big smile and said; "I murdered my grandmother this morning." People would automatically respond with comments such as "How lovely!" or "Just continue with your great work!" Nobody listened to what he was saying, except one foreign diplomat. When the president said, "I murdered my grandmother this morning," the diplomat responded softly, "I’m sure she had it coming to her."
--James S. Hewett, Illustrations Unlimited (Wheaton: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc, 1988), p. 318.
Help me to realize that it was not the healthy who reached out to you. They bunched up in crowds, but it was those who suffered greatly who reached out to grasp you. It was the people in the streets, not in the sitting rooms of society that groped for your garment. It was needy people. People with out stretched arms. People with empty hands. People who had nothing to offer but the faith that you could make them whole. I confess, O Lord, how often I have followed in the crowd pressed around you. Yet how few times have those brushes with you changed my life? I have touched you, but only in the rush hour of religious activity. Sunday after Sunday I take my part in the crowd as I sit through the service. I sing the hymns, hear the sermon. I read my Bible, say my prayers, give my money. I attend the right seminars, tune in to the right programs, read the right books. How could I be so close your presence yet so far from your power? Could it be that my arms are folded? Could it be that my hands are full? I pray that if my arms are complacent, you would unfold them in outstretched longing for you. And if my hands are full, I pray that you would empty them so that I might cling only to you. (“Intimate Moments with the Savior”; Ken Gire)
A PERFECT SALVATION-COMMUNION MEDITATION
Near Mobile, Alabama there was a railroad bridge that spanned a big bayou. The date was September 22, 1993. It was a foggy morning just before daybreak when a tugboat accidentally pushed a barge into the bayou. The drifting barge slammed into the bridge. In the darkness no one could see the extent of the damage, but someone on the tugboat radioed the Coast Guard. Moments later, an Amtrak train, the Sunset Limited, reached the bridge as it traveled from Los Angeles to Miami. Unaware of the damage, the train crossed the bridge at 70 mph. There were 210 passengers on board. As the weight of the train crossed the damaged support, the bridge gave away. Three locomotive units and the first four of train’s eight passenger cars fell into the alligator infested bayou. The darkness and fog was thickened by fire and smoke. Six miles from land; the victims lay as food for the aroused alligators. Helicopters were called in to help rescue the victims. They were able to save 163 persons.
One rescue stands out. Gery and Mary Chancey were waiting in the railcar with their 11 year old daughter. When the car shifted and began to rapidly fill with water, there was only one thing they could do. They pushed their young daughter through the window into the hands of a resuer, then succumbed to their waterey grave. What a picture of our salvation, especially when you know that their daughter was imperfect by the world's standards. She was born with cerebral palsey and needed help with even the most routine things. But she was so precious to her pa...
: On Tuesday morning September 11, 2001 Dawn Robinson followed her usual morning routine while getting ready for work. Which consist of her morning quiet time where she prays for God’s leadership throughout the day. Shortly after arriving at work in New York City she made her way to her office in the south tower of the World Trade Center. At 8:45 a.m. she heard a loud boom and looking out her window saw smoke from the north tower. A voice came over the intercom and informed everyone that no was in danger and stay where they where. Dawn says that immediately she felt a compelling urge to get out of the building. Then she said she had a very intense feeling of Closter phobia. So she immediately began making her way to the stairs. Dawn then says, that about 75% of the people she came in contact with were following the advice from the intercom system and where going back to their offices to continue working. Never the less Dawn continued making her way down the emergency stairwells. When she made it to the 42nd floor at 9:03 a.m. Flight 175, a bowing 767 hit the south tower slamming into the area of the building where Dawn’s office was located. God put an urging in Dawn hearts. What if she would’ve brushed it off? What if on Tuesday morning Dawn skipped her quiet time, or didn’t pray for God’s leadership on that day?
Time management from The Unleashing Connection, Winter 1990, p. 3
"In one year, the average American will read or complete 3,000 notices and forms, read 100 newspapers and 36 magazines, watch 2,463 hours of television, listen to 730 hours of radio, buy 20 records, talk on the telephone almost 61 hours and read 3 books."
