The Grace Beneath a Duck
I grew up seeing ducks. Maybe you did to. From my bird books, I identified all kinds of ducks and distinguished them by their plumage and behavior. I’ve seen ducks for sixty years, seen them beautifully fly, glide across a lake, dive and resurface, waddle cutely on land—always with the pervasive quack. But while my wife was shopping at Lake Arrowhead, I watched the ducks in crystal-clear water. I was amazed. I have never before witnessed the many ways in which ducks move their feet underwater. Their techniques are like that of a skilled canoeist. They narrow (or feather) their…
Pull Your Ship In – Part 2
Looking back over decades of my life, I received numerous prophecies that truly seemed to have credibility. Some were predictive of what would happen in the future. I confess that my tendency was to passively wait on God alone to do what was prophesied. I sat in faith, waiting for the prophecy ship to come in. In retrospect, too often the prophecies did not find fulfillment because what I was doing would fall short, whether through character flaws or lack of participating with God day by day. Too often I wasted time and opportunity by waiting, and waiting, and waiting…
Pull Your Ship In – Part 1
If you see your life as being in God’s hands, and submit to him, that’s a great start. Yet if you just wait on him to do wonderful things in your life, you may find more disappointment than you expected. It may seem biblical and spiritual to simply wait on God to do the things he promises in his word. That’s faith, right? But look at the biblical record: God made Abraham leave his home and truck across the known world of that time. He made Noah build an ark, which some scholars calculate would have taken fifty years to…
The Inspiring Legacy of Pat Robertson
Pat Robertson, the pioneer and icon of American Christian television has died at 93.Regardless of what any one of us may think of him or his views, or of his politics, he was a significant figure in American Christianity—especially the breakthroughs he made. He was a visionary, a pioneer, a risk-taker, and a breaker of barriers who created far-reaching changes for American Christianity’s interface with the world and much more. He left a huge legacy.__________ He started the Christian Broadcasting Network with a mere $3 in its new bank account. It now reaches 150 nations in more than a hundred languages. He started…
Hardship Can Be the Best Friend of Our Souls
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was a Russian soldier who criticized Stalin and was sent to Soviet prison camps. He survived and he wrote books. Eventually he became a Nobel Prize laureate. In one of his books, he famously wrote, “Bless you prison, bless you for being in my life. For there, lying upon the rotting prison straw, I came to realize that the object of life is not prosperity as we are made to believe, but the maturity of the human soul.” Reread that and think about it.Imagine if the majority of people in the world thought this way. It would certainly…
