2 Corinthians 5:8. We are confident, I say, and would prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord. Winston Churchill (1874-1965) made specific requests regarding his funeral service. He asked that it begin with the playing of “Taps,” the traditional  military signal played at the end of the day or…

Ephesians 2 v 8. For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God. During the Spanish-American War, Clara Barton was overseeing the work of the Red Cross in Cuba. One day Colonel Theodore Roosevelt came to her, wanting to buy food for his sick…

Psalm 104 v 24.How many are your works, Lord! In wisdom you made them all; the earth is full of your creatures. A tiny bird, the lesser white-throat warbler, summers in Germany and winters in Africa. As the days grow short, the adult birds head south, leaving their little ones behind. Several weeks later, the young fly…

Mark 6 v 46. After leaving them, he went up on a mountainside to pray When a whitewater raft guide shouts, “Eddy out!” he doesn’t mean, “Throw someone called Edward out of the boat.” It’s a command for the people on one side to hold their paddles against the current while the others stroke. This…

1 Peter 5 v 7.Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.Isaac Page tells the story of a poor man in Ireland who was plodding along toward home, carrying a huge sack of potatoes. A horse and wagon came along and the driver stopped to give him a ride. The man accepted and…

Matthew 8 v 27.The men were amazed and asked, “What kind of man is this? Even the winds and the waves obey him!” Ocean waves can be awesome in size and power. Sailors have measured waves at 60 feet, higher than most houses. In 1933 the Navy tanker Ramapo was hit by a wave 112…

Books! Books! Books! Hardcovers and paperbacks. Reference works and joke books. Romantic novels and mysteries. Self-help books and religious publications. They just keep appearing and we keep buying them. We also keep writing them. No wonder Solomon said, “Of making many books there is no end “(Eccl. 12 v 12). Jill Briscoe was addressing a…

Psalm 136 v 1.Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good. His love endures forever. You don’t have to live long in this world before it becomes painfully clear that nothing lasts forever. The car you were so proud of when you bought it is spending too much time in the garage getting fixed. Those clothes…

Psalm 1 v 3.That person is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in seasonand whose leaf does not wither-whatever they do prospers. People who don’t want to wait 4 decades for a globe Norway maple to grow in their front garden can buy a 30 foot specimen from a nursery for £30,000. A 50…

Philippians 2 v 9.Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name What’s in a name? Plenty, according to Justin Kaplan and Anne Bernays, authors of the book The Language of Names. In the section of their book where they discuss literary names, Kaplan and Bernays point…