Illustrations

In the 1950s a psychologist, Stanton Samenow, and a psychiatrist, Samuel Yochelson, sharing the conventional wisdom that crime is caused by environment, set out to prove their point. They began a 17-year study involving thousands of hours of clinical testing of 250 inmates here in the District of Columbia. To their astonishment, they discovered that the cause of crime cannot be traced to environment, poverty, or oppression. Instead, crime is the result of individuals making, as they put it, wrong moral choices.

Samuel Brengle who was an early Salvation Army official was once introduced as the, “Great Dr. Brengle.” He later wrote in his diary, “If I appear great in their eyes, the Lord is most graciously helping me to see how absolutely nothing I am without Him, and helping me to keep little in my own eyes. He does use me. But I am so concerned that He uses me and that it is not of me the work is done. The axe cannot boast of the trees it has cut down. It could do nothing but for the woodsman. He made it, he sharpened it, and he used it.

The Sunday school teacher was teaching a class of children about creation. “Now, children,” she said, “Who can tell us what makes the flower spring from the seed?”

“God does it,” answered one little girl, “but fertilizer helps.”

Source: Unknown

At Sunday school they were teaching how God created everything, including human beings. Little Johnny, a child in the kindergarten class, seemed especially intent when they told him how Eve was created out of one of Adam’s ribs. Later in the week his mother noticed him lying down as though he were ill, and said, “Johnny, what’s the matter?”

Johnny said, “I don’t feel well, I think I’m having a wife.”

Source: Unknown

“A man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can’t read them.”—Mark Twain

In June of 2013 news broadcasts across the country featured a little boy named Grayson Clamp doing something he had never done before. The three-year-old was born without the auditory nerves that carry sound to the brain. Attempts to restore his hearing with a cochlear implant were unsuccessful, so doctors at the University of North Carolina tried an experimental procedure to implant an auditory nerve directly into Grayson’s brain.

“God is looking for people through whom He can do the impossible. What a pity that we plan only the things we can do by ourselves.”—A. W. Tozer

I am standing upon the seashore. A ship at my side spreads her white sails to the morning breeze and starts for the blue ocean. She is an object of beauty and strength, and I stand and watch until at last she hangs like a speck of white cloud just where the sea and sky come down to mingle with each other.

Then someone at my side says, “There she goes!”

Gone where?

Gone from my sight ... that is all.

The story is told about a stage coach company was hiring teamsters to drive its stage coaches through a mountainous area. The local office manager had advertised for the position and people began to apply for the job. As they were interviewed, the boss asked each applicant, “How close can you drive the team to the edge of the cliff as you round the mountain.” The first fellow replied that he was skilled enough that he could drive the stage coach within three feet of the edge of the cliff. The boss thanked him for his time and called in the next applicant.

Uncle Oscar was apprehensive about his first airplane ride. His friends, eager to hear how it went, asked if he enjoyed the flight. “Well,” commented Uncle Oscar, “it wasn’t as bad as I thought it might be, but I’ll tell you this. I never did put all my weight down!”