Topic(s): Wisdom

During my second month of college, our professor gave us a pop quiz. I was a conscientious student and had breezed through the questions until I read the last one:

“What is the first name of the woman who cleans the school?” Surely this was some kind of joke. I had seen the cleaning woman several times. She was tall, dark-haired, and in her 50s, but how would I know her name?

I handed in my paper, leaving that question blank. Just before class ended, one student asked if the last question would count toward our quiz grade.

“Absolutely,” said the professor. “In your careers, you will meet many people. All are significant. They deserve your attention and care, even if all you do is smile and say “hello.”

I’ve never forgotten that lesson. (Her name was Dorothy.)

“For I say . . . not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think.” —Romans 12:3

HBO

Topic(s): Salvation

To most people, the above letters mean something entirely different from what is meant by them here.

• H means Hear the word of the Lord. This is the beginning of obedience (Romans 10:17).

• B means Believe the word of the Lord. This is essential if we intend to be pleasing to our Creator (Hebrews 11:6).

• O means Obey the word of the Lord. There is no substitute for obedience (1 Samuel 15:22; John 14:15).

In New Testament times, sinners heard, believed, and obeyed the gospel. As this was pleasing to God then, it is now also (Acts 2:38; 3:19; 22:16). Hear, believe, and obey is God’s simple plan for saving men. —Bill Dillon, Hickory Ridge, AR

Her Favorite Song

Topic(s): Blessings, Pain & Suffering

Some years back, I read in The Commission magazine an incident I will never forget. A church group from New Bern, North Carolina, had traveled to the Caribbean on a mission trip. Their host took them to visit a leper colony on the island of Tobago. While visiting with these sad patients, they held a worship service in the campus chapel. The lepers filed in and took their seats on the pews, and the Carolinians led them in hymns. The minister of the group—his name is Jack; wish I had the last name—noticed that one patient was sitting on the back row, facing the opposite direction. How unusual.

Jack said, “We have time for one more hymn. Does anyone have a favorite?” Now for the first time, the leprous woman on the back row turned around to face the front. Jack said, “I found myself staring into the most hideous face I had ever seen. She had no nose and no lips. Just the bare teeth, like a skull.” As she turned, she raised her hand in the air. Except it wasn’t a hand. It was the bony end of her arm, just a nub. As poor Jack was trying to take this in, she spoke. “Could we sing ‘Count Your Many Blessings’?”

The preacher lost it. He stumbled out of the pulpit and through the door into the yard, with tears in his eyes. Another stepped up and led the hymn, and a friend walked outside and put his arm around Jack. “You’ll never be able to sing that song again, will you, Jack?” “Oh, yeah, I’ll sing it,” Jack said, “but not in the same way.”

Serving the Lord, rejoicing in Him, obeying, giving, loving, praying. Regardless. —Adapted from Joe McKeever

“Ye are blessed of the Lord which made heaven and earth.” —Psalm 115:15

What Howard Learned in Heartbreak

Topic(s): Faith, Pain & Suffering, Priorities

Howard Rutledge, a United States Air Force pilot, was shot down over North Vietnam during the early stages of the war.

He spent several miserable years in the hands of his captors before being released at the war’s conclusion. In his book In the Presence of Mine Enemies, he reflects upon the resources from which he drew in those arduous days when life seemed so intolerable:

“During those longer periods of enforced reflection, it became so much easier to separate the important from the trivial, the worthwhile from the waste. For example, in the past, I usually worked or played hard on Sundays and had no time for church. For years Phyllis [his wife] had encouraged me to join the family at church. She never nagged or scolded—she just kept hoping. But I was too busy, too preoccupied, to spend one or two short hours a week thinking about the really important things. Now the sights and sounds and smells of death were all around me. My hunger for spiritual food soon outdid my hunger for a steak. Now I wanted to talk about God and Christ and the church. But in Heartbreak [the name POWs gave their prison camp] solitary confinement, there was no preacher, no Sunday-School teacher, no Bible, no hymnbook, no community of believers to guide and sustain me. I had completely neglected the spiritual dimension of my life. It took prison to show me how empty life is without God.”

It took the presence of a POW camp to show Rutledge that there was a center to his private world that he had been neglecting all of his life. —Gordon MacDonald

“Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man.” —Ecclesiastes 12:13