With cranberries, it’s the bounce that counts. According to Science Digest, processing cranberries involves pouring freshly picked berries down a series of step-like boards. At each level, only the berries that bounce over an eight-to-ten-inch barrier pass the test. Each berry gets eleven chances. Those that fail are discarded. Some fruits are judged by their…

Oswald Chambers of Scotland showed so much artistic promise that he was invited to study under Europe’s greatest masters at age eighteen. But he declined the offer and enrolled in a little-known Bible school, where he eventually became a teacher. Later he went to Egypt and ministered to the spiritual needs of British soldiers. Chambers died there…

This Advent, everyone’s waiting. But alongside the Christian tradition of waiting expectantly to celebrate the birth of the Saviour, the world waits to be saved from COVID-19. And, interestingly, both forms of waiting use the same language: of “light breaking through.” Earlier last month, when the first promising signs from the vaccine trials emerged, the…

In his book, “Why Christians Sin”, J. Kirk Johnston tells about a young Russian woman, who before the collapse of the Iron Curtain, was allowed to visit her relatives in Canada. She was a devout Christian, and her friends assumed that she would defect and seek asylum in Canada or the US because of religious…

1 John 4 v 19 : We love because he first loved us Nansen, the Norwegian explorer, tried to measure an extremely deep part of the Arctic ocean. On the first day, he used his longest measuring line but could not reach the bottom. He wrote in his log book, “The ocean is deeper than that!”…

When quoting Romans 8 v 28, we often begin with the words, “All things work together for good.” But the verse really begins like this; “We know that in all things work together for good to those who love God.” Our knowing comes by faith. There is a well known story about a shipwreck. When…

According to tradition, when the apostle John was overseer in Ephesus, his hobby was raising pigeons. It is said that on one occasion another elder passed his house as he returned from hunting and saw John playing with one of the birds. The man gently chided him for spending his time so frivolously. John looked at…

Exodus 17:12 : When Moses’ hands grew tired, they took a stone and put it under him and he sat on it. Aaron and Hur held his hands up—one on one side, one on the other—so that his hands remained steady till sunset. In 1989, paraplegic Mark Wellman climbed the sheer granite face of Yosemite’s…

A certain preacher understood why he had never been asked to join a choir or sing a solo. Musical talent was not one of his gifts. He had discovered this at the age of 9 when he was outside one day singing loudly. His mother opened the door and asked, “Is one of the calves…

The bighorn sheep in Colorado’s Rocky Mountain National Park will often allow visitors to approach them from below and take close-up photos. But don’t try to get above them or the entire herd will run away. The bighorns’ escape route from predators is always upward. On level ground a bobcat or cougar can easily overtake the…