ANIMALS
It is intriguing how animals make up a part of our vocabulary. Foxy people can ferret out all the wildcat schemes so they never have to go on wild goose chases. Politicians like to pigeonhole requests that do not please them. When people are extremely pigheaded and mulish, we often think they must be playing possum. Because the hoggish person always wants the lion’s share, he usually gets the horse laugh instead. Who has ever seen a hawk-eyed or eagle-eyed marksman miss the bull’s eye? A catty person is mean, but he may get cattier during the dog days of July and August. It is often said that some men are henpecked by their wives; maybe it is because they act piggishly. A night owl likes to stay up late, perhaps reading all night. No wonder his books may be dog-eared! Did you ever see professional dancers do the fox trot? Or a swimming champion perform the swan dive? Until recent times the mink enjoyed a good name, but because of notorious political corruption the mink coat lost its glamour. So anyone buying mink coats to bribe officials may wind up with white elephants.
ANNIVERSARIES
Fifty Precious Years
When the gold has turned to silver,
Or the brown has turned to gray,
And the rocking chair’s a treasure
At the closing of the day.
Then the choicest of the blessings
We could ask, so it appears,
Is to have life’s partner with us
After fifty precious years.
Fifty times the seasons changing,
Fifty times the taxes paid.
Fifty times the windows shuttered,
Fifty times the garden made.
Everything so swiftly moving—
Yet in spite of smiles or tears,
What a joy to be together
After fifty precious years.
On the future we can’t borrow,
T’would be foolish if we’d hold
Onto life, and try to keep it,
Like ’twas silver or ’twas gold.
We just hope that all that follows,
All of this, and heaven too,
Will be just continuation,
Of the fifty years we knew.
—Maynard Kulp
Wife: “Tomorrow is our fiftieth anniversary. Let’s kill the pig.”
Husband slowly responded, “Why murder the pig for what happened fifty years ago?”
A couple were being interviewed on their golden wedding anniversary. “In all that time—did you ever consider divorce?” they were asked. “Oh, no, not divorce,” the little old lady said. “Murder sometimes, but never divorce.”
—Bits & Pieces
ANXIETY
The beginning of anxiety is the end of faith, and the beginning of faith is the end of anxiety.
—George Mueller
Said the robin to the sparrow,
“I should really like to know
Why these anxious human beings
Rush about and worry so.”
Said the sparrow to the robin,
“I think that it must be
They have no Heavenly Father
Such as cares for you and me.”
According to the National Anxiety Institute, Maplewood, New Jersey, people worry most about these ten problems, listed in the order of concern:
1. AIDS
2. Drug abuse
3. Nuclear waste
4. Ozone layer
5. Famine
6. The homeless
7. Federal deficit
8. Air pollution
9. Water pollution
10. Garbage
APATHY
I’m neither for nor against apathy.
A university professor noticed a student was about to fall asleep in class. So the teacher asked the student, “What is the greatest problem in our society—ignorance or apathy?” The student replied, “I don’t know and I don’t care.”
APOSTASY
When I started going to school in Rostov-on-Don, other children, egged on by Komsomol members, taunted me for accompanying my mother to the last remaining church in town and tore the cross from around my neck. A few years later, I heard a number of people offer this explanation for the great disasters that had befallen Russia: “Men have forgotten God; that’s why all this has happened.”
—Alexander Solzhenitsyn
APOLOGIES
An apology is the super glue of life. It can repair just about anything.
—Synn Johnston
APOSTLES
All of the apostles were insulted by the enemies of their Master, Jesus Christ. They were called to seal their doctrines with their blood and nobly did they bear the trial.
Matthew suffered martyrdom by being slain with a sword at a distant city of Ethiopia.
Mark expired at Alexandria, after being cruelly dragged through the streets of that city.
Luke was hanged upon an olive tree in the classic land of Greece.
John was put in a caldron of boiling oil, but escaped death in a miraculous manner and was afterward branded at Patmos.
Peter was crucified at Rome with his head downward.
James, the Greater, was beheaded at Jerusalem.
James, the Less, was thrown from a lofty pinnacle of the temple and then beaten to death with a fuller’s club.
Bartholomew was flayed alive.
Andrew was bound to a cross, whence he preached to his persecutors until he died.
Thomas was run through the body with a lance at Coromandel in the East Indies.
Jude was shot to death with arrows.
Matthias was first stoned and then beheaded.
Barnabas of the Gentiles was stoned to death at Salonica.
Paul, after various tortures and persecutions, was beheaded at Rome by the emperor Nero.
Such was the fate of the apostles, according to traditional statements.
—Paul Lee Tan
APPRECIATION
Next to excellence is the appreciation of it.
—William Thackeray
A group of managers and employees were once asked, “What do people want from their work?” Managers put job security and good wages at the top of their lists. Employees tended to rank those things near the middle of a ten-item list. The employees ranked full appreciation and being in on things at the top. I would rather be able to appreciate things I cannot have than to have things I am not able to appreciate.
—Elbert Hubbard
The deepest principle in human nature is the craving to be appreciated.
—William James
The way to develop the best in a person is by appreciation and encouragement. There is nothing else that so kills the ambition of a person as criticism from his superiors.
—Charles Schwab
ARMED FORCES
A youngster was telling his parents what he had learned in school about George Washington. “Was George Washington a soldier or a sailor?” asked his father. The child thought for a moment. “I don’t know,” he said, “but I think he must have been a soldier. I saw a picture of him crossing the Delaware and any sailor knows better than to stand up in a rowboat.”
ASSOCIATIONS
Will Rogers always said people only learn through two things: one is reading and the other is association with smarter people.
—Bits & Pieces
A Kentucky farmer entered his mule in the Kentucky derby. Someone was amazed to see that and asked about it. He said, “I don’t think he has much chance to win, but the association will do him good.”
ASSUMPTIONS
A traveler, between flights at an airport, went to a lounge and bought a small package of cookies. Then she sat down and began reading a newspaper. Gradually she became aware of a rustling noise. From behind her paper, she was flabbergasted to see a neatly dressed man helping himself to her cookies. Not wanting to make a scene, she leaned over and took a cookie herself. A minute or two passed, and then came more rustling. He was helping himself to another cookie! By this time, they had come to the end of the package, but she was so angry she didn’t dare allow herself to say anything. Then, as if to add insult to injury, the man broke the remaining cookie in two, pushed half across to her, ate the other half, and left. Still fuming some time later when her flight was announced, the woman opened her handbag to get her ticket. To her shock and embarrassment, there she found her pack of unopened cookies! How wrong our assumptions can be.
—John Ross
ASSURANCE
Many who lack assurance of salvation are like the boy on a ferry boat who was riding his bicycle all the time he was on the boat. He wanted to make sure he got across the river.
You imagine that I look back on my work with calm and satisfaction. But there is not a single concept of which I am convinced that it will stand firm, and I feel uncertain whether I am in general on the right track. I don’t want to be right—I only want to know whether I am right.
—Albert Einstein
On July 2, 1937, aviatrix Amelia Earhart and her flight companion, Lieutenant Commander Fred Noonan, vanished in the vicinity of Howland Island in the South Pacific. They were attempting a round-the-world flight in a twin-engine Lockheed aircraft. In her last radio contact with a United States naval vessel, Miss Earhart transmitted this terse message: “Position doubtful.” She undoubtedly knew her approximate position, but because she didn’t know her precise position she and her flight companion went to their deaths.
A man once came to D. L. Moody and said he was worried because he didn’t feel saved. Moody asked, “Was Noah safe in the ark?” “Certainly he was,” the man replied. “Well, what made him safe, his feeling or the ark?” The inquirer got the point. “How foolish I’ve been,” he said. “It is not my feeling; it is Christ who saves.”
One day a friend who was filled with doubt and spiritual perplexity asked the Scottish preacher McLeod Campbell, “Pastor, you always seem to have peace of soul. Tell me, how can you feel that you’ve got such a tight hold on God?” With a smile Campbell exclaimed, “I don’t always feel that I have hold of Him, but praise the Lord, I know that He always has hold of me.”
A little boy was being tempted by the Devil when the boy was in bed. He was getting nowhere with the temptations the Devil was bringing. Then he finally opened his Bible to 1 John 5:13, put it under his bed, and said to the Devil, “Here, you read it for yourself.”
—Alan Redpath
The remarkable thing about assurance is this: When we rest on the Word first, we get the feeling afterward. This is well illustrated in the story of a man’s carrying a bag of potatoes on his back. He was asked by a skeptic, “How do you know you are saved?” Taking a few more steps forward, then letting the potatoes fall, he replied, “How do I know I have dropped the bag? I haven’t looked around.” “No,” replied the critic, “but I suppose you can tell by the lessening of the weight.” “Exactly,” said the Christian. “That’s how I know I am saved. I have lost the guilty feeling of sin and sorrow and have found peace and satisfaction in my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ by simply resting on His Word.”
During the first part of the construction of the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, no safety devices were used, and twenty-three men fell to their deaths. For the last part of the project, however, a large net that cost $100,000 was employed. At least ten men fell into it and were saved. But an interesting sidelight is the fact that 25 percent more work was accomplished when the men were assured of their safety.
—Curtis Hutson
A woman said, “I may tremble on the Rock, but the Rock never trembles under me.”
The Scottish man who was rejoicing in the fact that he knew he was saved was once asked by a friend, “But just how do you know you are saved? You are always talking about knowing for sure you are saved, but just what makes you so sure? How do you know?” “Well,” the old man immediately answered, “I was there when it happened.”
A captain never anchors his ship by fastening his anchor inside the ship. It is always outside. The Christian is not saved because he feels secure within himself or believes that he can hold out, but because he is trusting in another, the Lord Jesus Christ. “How can I know for sure I am saved?” “When you were married, the minister gave the word that you were pronounced husband and wife. Then after that did you ever doubt that you were really married?” “No.” “All right. You took the minister’s word for it; why not take God’s Word for it? You can know you are saved if you believe God’s Word.”
ASTRONOMY
In the town hall in Copenhagen stands the world’s most complicated clock. It took forty years to build, at a cost of more than a million dollars. That clock has ten faces, 15,000 parts, and is accurate to two-fifths of a second every 300 years. The clock computes the time of day, the days of the week, the months and years, and the movements of the planets for 2,500 years. Some parts of the clock will not move until twenty-five centuries have passed. What is intriguing is that the clock is not accurate. It loses two-fifths of a second every 300 years. Like all clocks, that timepiece in Copenhagen must be regulated by a more precise clock, the universe itself. This mighty astronomical clock with its billions of moving parts, from atoms to stars, rolls on century after century with movements so reliable that all time on earth can be measured against it.
—Haddon Robinson
Imagine that the thickness of this page which you are reading is the distance from earth to sun (93 million miles). The distance to the nearest star (4 ½ light years) would be a 71-foot-high shelf of paper. And the diameter of our own galaxy (100,000 light years) is a 310-mile stack of paper, while the edge of the known universe is a pile of paper one-third of the way to the sun (31 million miles).
—Paul Lee Tan
A scientist once suggested an interesting analogy. Imagine, he said, a perfectly smooth glass pavement on which the finest speck can be seen. Then shrink our sun from 865,000 miles in diameter to only 2 feet, and place this gilt ball on the pavement to represent the sun.
Step off 82 paces of about 2 feet each, and to proportionately represent the first planet, Mercury, put down a mustard seed.
Take 60 steps more, each about 2 feet, and for Venus, put down an ordinary shot the size of a BB.
Mark 78 steps more, and for our earth, put down a pea.
Step off 108 paces from there, and for Mars, put down a pinhead.
Sprinkle some fine dust for the asteroids, take 788 steps more, and for Jupiter, put down an orange.
Take 934 steps, and for Saturn, put down a golf ball.
Mark 2,086 steps more, and for Uranus, put down a marble.
Step off 2,322 steps from there, and for Neptune, put down a cherry.
This will take 2 ½ miles, and we haven’t discussed Pluto. If we swing completely around, we have a smooth glass surface 5 miles in diameter representing our solar system, just a tiny fraction of the heavens. On this surface, 5 miles across, we have only a mustard seed, BB, pea, pinhead, dust, orange, golf ball, marble, and cherry. And we should have to go 6,720 miles, not feet, on the same scale before we could put down another two-foot ball to represent the nearest star.
A train going at the rate of a mile a minute would reach our nearest star in 48 million years; if a song were sung there and the sound could travel here, it would be 3,800,000 years before we could hear it. A spider’s thread reaching to it would weigh five hundred tons.