Worthy Words

According to an article in the UK based "Daily Mail", Monday is Blue Monday — the unhappiest day of the year. It says, "Unpaid Christmas bills, nasty weather, and failed New Year's resolutions combine to make January 25 the gloomiest in the calendar."  Maybe you're feeling it. Every now and then reality has a way of catching up with us, reminding us just how 'not-right' everything is. Bad news hits even harder, goals seem even more unreachable, progress seems even more elusive.  I don't know about you, but "Blue Monday" isn't limited to Monday for me, or even January. There are times when I look at the effort I'm investing and the results I'm getting -- and I cringe at the disparity.    These days are wake up calls. Sometimes it's a call to do something differently—to eliminate excess and/or increase my efforts. Most often, it's a call to reaffirm my faith in the promises of God.    Paul wrote, "...

King David failed in a big way: He committed adultery, and then he committed murder to cover it up. The amazing thing about this is that David was God’s man. Many times when we hear about a high profile preacher or spiritual leader collapsing in moral failure, we quickly come to the conclusion: "The man is a hypocrite. He’s a phony. He’s not sincere and he’s not a true believer." Sometimes that may be the case, and sometimes it may not be the case. It’s not up to us to decide. It’s up to God to decide who’s phony and who isn’t; we’ll let him make the call. In David’s case, God did make that call. He said that David was a man after his own heart, and that he had appointed David specifically to lead his people. That doesn’t mean that David was perfect; we clearly see this in his actions. David made some BIG mistakes. And, in this case, when I say mistakes I mean SINS. He out and out rebelled against what he knew was right. He knew it was wrong and he did it anyway. What we se...

There was a time in my life when I carried more personal issues than I could handle—emotionally, physically, spiritually, relationally, legally. What compounded these issues was the fact that I had to deal with them immediately — they were not going away on their own. I was staggering beneath the weight of these crushing burdens. I was in the full-blown mode of “Why me Lord!”   Have you also staggered under the insurmountable? In my experience of the insurmountable, family and friends and other Christ-followers each came to me when I was suffering. They prayed for me. They empathized with me. They cried with me. They spent time with me. They consoled me in silence.   Just like Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar did with their friend Job. But unlike these Jobian associates they didn’t assume that my troubles were a sign of God’s judgment. They were more Pauline like in their approach —“Mourn with those who mourn” (Romans 12:15) . They were willing to enter into the pain of a suf...

Today, December 31, 2015, is the sixty first time I have lived the year’s last day. The eve of a new year is fast approaching and already has in other parts of the world like New Zealand and Australia. Regardless of the time, this accumulation of last days has come and gone so often that the typical individual doesn’t give much thought as to the possibility of it being the last opportunity to…. Why is that? Maybe it’s because the “last day” has always been followed by another day. The experience of the last day of school, the last day of vacation, the last day of work, the last day single, the last day married, the last day employed, the last day of the fair, the last day of the play, the last day of the sale, the last day before retirement, and others are conditioned on the reality that another day will follow. I’m not speaking to the quality or lack thereof of the next day just the fact that the expectation of something to follow the last day will arrive and life will continue on a...