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WITandWISDOM(tm) - April 24, 1998 THOUGHTS: All growth, including political growth, is the result of risk-taking. - Jude Wanniski (Reader's Digest, July 1993) SPECIAL THOUGHTS: "Man . . . is of few days, and full of trouble." Job 14:1 It may be of great service to us, before we fall asleep, to remember this mournful fact, for it may lead us to set loose by earthly things. There is nothing very pleasant in the recollection that we are not above the shafts of adversity, but it may humble us and prevent our boasting like the Psalmist in our morning's portion. "My mountain standeth firm: I shall never be moved." It may stay us from taking too deep root in this soil from which we are so soon to be transplanted into the heavenly garden. Let us recollect the frail tenure upon which we hold our temporal mercies. If we would remember that all the trees of earth are marked for the woodman's axe, we should not be so ready to build our nests in them. We should love, but we should love with the love which expects death, and which reckons upon separations. Our dear relations are but loaned to us, and the hour when we must return them to the lender's hand may be even at the door. The like is certainly true of our worldly goods. Do not riches take to themselves wings and fly away? Our health is equally precarious. Frail flowers of the field, we must not reckon upon blooming for ever. There is a time appointed for weakness and sickness, when we shall have to glorify God by suffering, and not by earnest activity. There is no single point in which we can hope to escape from the sharp arrows of affliction; out of our few days there is not one secure from sorrow. Man's life is a cask full of bitter wine; he who looks for joy in it had better seek for honey in an ocean of brine. Beloved reader, set not your affections upon things of earth: but seek those things which are above, for here the moth devoureth, and the thief breaketh through, but there all joys are perpetual and eternal. The path of trouble is the way home. Lord, make this thought a pillow for many a weary head! - Charles Spurgeon, "Morning and Evening Daily Readings" THIS & THAT: Sitting by the window of her convent, Sister Barbara opened a letter from home one evening. Inside the letter was a $100 bill her parents had sent. Sister Barbara smiled at the gesture. As she read the letter by the window, she noticed a shabbily dressed stranger leaning against the lamp post below. Quickly, she wrote, "Don't despair. Sister Barbara," on a piece of paper, wrapped the $100 bill in it, got the man's attention and tossed it out the window to him. The stranger picked it up, and with a puzzled expression and a tip of his hat, went off down the street. The next day, Sister Barbara was told that a man was at her door, insisting on seeing her. She went down, and found the stranger waiting. Without a word, he handed her a huge wad of $100 bills. "What's this?" she asked. "That's the $8,000 you have coming Sister," he replied. "Don't Despair paid 80-to-1." (Shared by Bill's Punch Line tcmrtalk@airmail.net) ~~~~~~~~~~~~ WIFE: "There's trouble with the car. It has water in the carburetor." HUSBAND: "Water in the carburetor? That's ridiculous." WIFE: "I tell you the car has water in the carburetor." HUSBAND: "You don't even know what a carburetor is. I'll check it out. Where's the car?" WIFE: "In the pool." (Shared by Just 4 Laughs! Http://www.GeoCities.com/Hollywood/Set/6993) TRIVIA: In 1993 152 carbonized papyri scrolls were discovered in the Byzantine church of Petra, Jordan. The scrolls were probably written prior to 528 A.D. One of the scrolls deal mostly with property matters. Taxes were 47.5 percent! - Biblical Archaeology Review, March/April 1998 |