HARD TO BELIEVE

 It is hard to believe that the heart beats 100,000 times in a day.  But then there are 86,400 seconds in a day.  The heart beats about 3.5 million times in a year and in an average lifetime the heart beats more than 2.5 billion times.

The Jabez Prayer--1982 Edition

 The Jabez Prayer is in First Chronicles 4:10.  The New King James version of it reads as follows: "Oh that you would bless me indeed, and enlarge my territory, that your hand would be with me, and that you would keep me from evil, that I may not cause pain."

Most translations of the Jabez Prayer are characterized by this sentiment: "that I may not experience pain"rather than that I would not cause pain.

The scholars at Thomas Nelson Publishers "assigned" a merit to Jabez that led him to find favor with God. 

When I Was One-And-Twenty by A E Housman - Poetry Reading

Left Untried

The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting.  It has been found difficult, and left untried. (G.K. Chesterton) 

Never Suburban

 "The spiritual life can never be made suburban," said Howard Masey.  "It is always frontier and we who live in it must accept and even rejoice that it remains untamed."

This quote brings to mind a quote from the Gospel of John:  Chapter 8 verse 3 in the King James Version reads : "The wind bloweth where it listeth. and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is everyone that is born of the Spiritt."

Millennium Morning

I was going to make all wars to cease

Before breakfast.  Before lunch

I was going to take 100 Dalmatians and

Fifty-six firetrucks and shut down hell

By eleven a.m.  I had read an issue of

The Journal of Near Death Studies

And realized hell was mostly frozen over and

My firetrucks would only make matters worse.

It was quiet though, all wars ceasing before

Breakfast, Nietzsche,  Marx, Lenin, and Hitler were enjoying a card game.

Schweitzer and Gandhi walked around on

Eggshells, pondering the first day of the thousand-year ceasefire.

Did I have regrets making Man in my own image?

Was it right for me to hide from Nietzsche when

He came looking for me? Did I learn to hide from

Adam, or did he learn to hide from me?

At 1 p.m. it was croquet with the prophet

Moses and Presley at Graceland.  We talked about the

Artichoke salad, Howard Finster's spelling and decided to

Take the next bus to Texas and visit the Cadillac Ranch. 

No One Ever Cared for Me Like Jesus

Charles Frederick Weigle

 The composer/evangelist Charles Frederick Weigle lived from 1871 to 1966.  He spent his last years as a guest resident of Tennessee Temple Schools and Highland Park Baptist Church in Chattanooga. One of the buildings was called the Weigle Building.  He had an apartment in the building.

One day in late 1965 or early 1966 my sister Debbie walked with him from the barber shop to his apartment. The sidewalks were icy and the walk took over ten minutes.  Debbie does not remember what they talked about as they walked.  Charles thanked her for walking with him.

Charles is best known for his song "No one ever cared for me like Jesus" written in 1932 as he recovered from a depression caused by his wife leaving him.

Here are the lyrics:

Chorus: No one ever cared for me like Jesus; There's no other friend so kind as He. No one else could take the sin and darkness from me; oh how much He cared for me.

First verse: I would love to tell you what I think of Jesus, since I found in Him a friend so strong and true. I would tell you how He changed my life completely;  He did something no other friend could do.

Second verse: All my life was full of sin when Jesus found me; all my heart was full of misery and woe. Jesus placed his strong arms about me and He led me in the way I ought to go.

Third verse: Ev'ry day He comes to me with new assurance; more and more I understand His word of love. But I'll never know just why He came to save me, till someday I see His blessed face above.