It's Your Birthday!

Description of the illustration: balloons, children, going to a party, colorful

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What is done in secret...

Description of the illustration:stained kneeling, praying, soldier, knight, armor, cape, praying hands, scripture, "But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you." Matthew 6:6

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 "War Room"

The tassel knot...

"Devote yourselves to prayer, being watchful and thankful" Colossains 4:2

Description of Illustration: rosary or prayer beads, praying, pray, obligation, remembering the points of prayer, open bible, husband and wife pray together

"From his temple he heard my voice my cry came before him, into his ears." Psalm 18:6

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"Put on salvation as your helmet..."

Description of Illustration: bronze helmet, "Put on salvation as your helmet..." Ephesians 6:7 beginning of the verse, soldier, transparent background

Read More About The Armor of God:

• Three Important Things I've Learned About The Armor of God
• The Helmet of Salvation
• Armor of God: Helmet of Salvation

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The Organist

Description of Illustration: relief carving of an organist, music, musical instruments, robe, playing a tune, transparent background

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Queen Esther's Crown

"the king loved Esther more than all the women, and she won grace
and favor in his sight more then all the virgins, so that he set the royal
crown on her head and made her queen instead of Vashti." Esther 2:17

Description of Illustration: feminine crown, brown text, white background, Book of Esther, favor with the king, gems, gold, floral crown, rubies, diamonds, ESV versions of scripture

"Then Queen Esther answered, "If I have found favor in your sight, O king,
 and if it please the king, let my life be granted me for my wish, and
my people for my request." Esther 7:3

"Then King Ahasuerus said to Queen Esther and to Modecai the Jew,
"Behold, I have given Esther the house of Haman, and they have
hanged him on the gallows, because he intended to lay hands
on the Jews." Esther 8:7

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The Sacred Heart and Rainbow

Description of Illustration: illustration of Jesus, Sacred Heart, clouds, rainbow, sun, mountains, landscape, transparent background

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Christ and Thomas by Verocchio

Description of Illustration: black and white sketch of a piece by Verocchio, Thomas doubts Jesus to be made of flesh and blood when he first sees him after Christ's crucifixion., Jesus tells Thomas to put his fingers in the scars were the wounds given him during the event. Thomas then believes Jesus is resurrected. sandals and halo

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Head of John The Baptist

 

Description of Illustration: from Lyonese Tile. British Museum, "And his head was brought in on a charger, and given to the damsel; and she brought it to her mother." Matthew 14:11, greyscale

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A statue of St. John the baptist

Description of Illustration: statue, St. John the baptist, shell, dressed in furs, lives in the wilderness, pointed to the coming of Christ, halo

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Be careful about how you judge another...

When I click on this the text disappears? No, the black text is on a transparent background and the blogspot slideshow software has black pages, hence it appears to disappear. However, if you upload it onto any other webpage that isn't black, the text will be visible.

Description of Illustration: scripture,"Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again." Matthew 7:1, 2, halo, Jesus quoted, stained glass, cross in halo, transparent backgrounds, one with black text the other with white text

Why can't I see this text? Because it is white. Click on the image to see how it will look on dark web pages.

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Capacity Limiting Supply

       "You can limit the working of almighty power, and can determine the rate at which it shall work on you. God fills the water pots to the brim, but not beyond the brim; and if, like the woman in the Old Testament story, we stop bringing vessels, the oil will stop flowing. It is an awful thing to think that we have -the power, as it were, to turn a stopcock, and so increase or diminish, or cut off altogether, the supply of God's mercy and Christ's healing and cleansing love in our hearts. You will get as much of God as you want, and no more. The measure of your desire is the measure of your capacity, and the measure of your capacity is the measure of God's gift." - Alexander McLaren.

• The God of No Limits 
• Don't Limit God  
• Breaking All The Rules

Calls And Conveyances In The East

       A source of offense (in the East) are calls formal in character. One can ruin his social standing by going to make this call in a wrong style of conveyance. A friend of mine had bought a Chinese sedan-chair with shorter handles than those of an ordinary sedan. It was loaned to a millionaire from New York to bring him up from the river, and it caused the greatest excitement that the city had ever known. People were laughing for years over it. Why? Because those shorter handles made of that sedan a spirit chair, in which the ghost is carried at funeral processions. It was just as appropriate as if Dr. Anderson, of the First Presbyterian Church up here, should receive a visiting clergyman in a hearse down at the station and bring him up-town in it. It is safe to say that the sight of his guest looking out through the glass sides would not be forgotten. You have reached your place, and you desire to make a good impression; but you are in such haste that you leap down from your cart, or gharry. Well, if a lady should do this in China or India, she might just as well in America if she desired to make a good impression upon a new friend, approach this friend's house skipping, or on the run; or a gentleman might just as appropriately vault a fence to get over into the yard, instead of entering by the gate where he was going to make a call. - H. P. Beach, "Student Volunteer Movement," 1906. 

• What International Missions Taught Me About Christianity & Culture
• A Missionary's Five Step Plan for Effective Cultural Resistance
• Protestant Missionaries and Cultural Change
• What is Knowledge? by Paul G. Hiebert

Baptism Interpreted

At the Student Volunteer Convention in Toronto, Dr. Horace G. Underwood told the following incident:

      A copy of the Book of the Acts fell into the hands of a Korean, whose heart was touched by the truths. He gathered his villagers together and taught them its contents and they sent for missionaries to come to them. It was impossible for them to go at once, but they sent copies of the Gospels. The eager Koreans read and studied as well as they could alone, and noticing that some "washing rite" was enjoined upon the believers in the Jesus doctrine, they met to discuss how they should follow it out and thus fulfill all righteousness. They prayed over it for a time, and at last decided that each should go to his own home and reverently should wash himself in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. (Text.)

• Sometimes extreme devotion knows the heavenly reward sooner. 
• Do you ever doubt your devotion to Christ? 
• Devotion To Christ

Baptism

Dr. R. F. Horton, in the Christian Endeavor World, tells the following story:

       There is a scene in my earlier ministry that used to make the best woman I ever knew laugh till the tears ran down her cheeks whenever she recalled it,

       A father, a tall and dignified man, with his wife, a gentle, quiet little lady, had brought the baby to the font that Sunday morning. As I read the opening words, the baby woke and began to scream. For my own part I was imperturbable, nor was the mother upset. But the tall, dignified man could not endure it; and just as I was approaching the actual rite, and required the baby, what the congregation saw was the father rapidly striding to a side door, with the white clothes of the screaming infant streaming behind in the haste of the flight. Happily parental authority worked miracles in the corridor, and the infant, vastly pacified, was brought back just in time to save the service from being a fiasco. And the humor turns into a deeper joy when now I see that child grown up into a beautiful girl, the joy of her parents and of all who behold her. 

• Augustine's Love Sermon
• Knowing God Loves Me
• God's Faithful Discipline

Balance Preserved In Nature

       Since times prehistoric, ever since the human species developed the sense of comparison and an eye for form, all spiders, with a resemblance to the big, hairy, ugly creatures reputed to be poisonous and now generally known by the name "tarantula," have been the victims of the crushing heel.

       The so-called spider bites received occasionally, and generally in early summer, often in bed, are inflicted by certain blood-sucking insects of several species, large and small. The mandibles of the average-sized, common place spiders are hardly powerful enough to pierce the human skin, and all of the poison contained in an arachnid's glands, injected into the flesh of a human being, will not make as much fuss as a respectable bee-sting. Moreover, spiders are not mammal blood-suckers, and don't bite if they can avoid doing so. So much for the negative qualities of spiders.

       If it were not for the spiders we should all promptly starve to death. Perhaps this is a little startling; it is none the less true. To enlarge upon it, certain spiders prey upon certain caterpillars, regularly inhabit their abodes, and kill so many of them that often whole colonies of the insects are wiped out of existence. These caterpillars normally feed upon the leaves of trees, bushes, and shrubs, frequently denuding a plant entirely. If they were plentiful enough to exhaust their common food they would turn to the weeds and grasses. Without check of any kind they would overrun the earth and destroy every green and growing thing. The spiders beautifully preserve the balance of nature. Kill all the spiders and mankind is doomed.  Collier's Weekly

• Love One Another With Tender Affection by Piper
• A Solace in Suffering by Bob Deffinbaugh
• What does "all things work together for good" really mean?

A Loose Balance

Many men think they can rely in a general way upon fate or fortune to square their moral accounts, but in the long run a man must face his record.

       Mr. Moody tells of a young couple who on commencing to keep house started to keep an account of their family expenses. After a few months the young husband said to his wife: "Darling, I'll spend the evening at home tonight, and we will look over the account together." The young husband found frequent entries like this: "G.K.W., one dollar and a half"; and a little later on, "G.K.W., two dollars"; and after a little, "G.K.W., three dollars." Becoming a little suspicious, he demanded, "Who is this 'G.K.W.' you have spent so much on?" "Oh," said she, "I never could make the accounts come out right, so I lumped all together that wouldn't balance, and called it G.K.W.‚ Goodness Knows What!" (Text.)  Louis Albert Banks. 

• Sincerity and Duplicity by Spurgeon (pdf.)
• Forgiveness: What It Is, What It Is Not
• Three Characteristic Sermons by Dwight Lyman Moody

Badness In Boys

       "He is a bad boy" may mean so many things. In the eyes of some teachers a boy is "bad" if he talks repeatedly to his neighbor. The boy who has a fight with another boy is "bad." The boy who does not study his lessons is "bad." The boy who goes to a moving-picture show is "bad." The boy who throws ink across the room is "bad." The boy who "answers back" is "bad." The boy who rifles the teacher's desk is "bad." The boy who disobeys school rules is "bad." "Give a dog a bad name and hang him" should now read, "Give a boy a bad name and ruin him."

       All school types of "badness" need classification. Many of them under careful classification would no longer be considered "bad." A boy's wrong acts are often due not so much to deliberate choosing of wrong after he knows right, but to the lack of any sense of right or wrong. Children's so-called "badness" is due to unmorality oftener than to immorality. Until a boy's moral nature has been roused and developed, it is absurd to think that one can find the basis of appeal in theoretic ethics or right for right's sake. Who is to blame when blind, unquestioning obedience to short-sighted,

arbitrary school rules is made the basis of a child's conduct and reputation?

       When children go through school learning nothing except what can be given to hundreds simultaneously, in classes so large that undue emphasis is laid upon order and quiet, who is to blame if the majority leave school with morals that alarm those interested? Go through the list of "bad boys" in your school or your town! Classify their offenses. Is immorality or unmorality responsible? If the latter, what share of the blame for this condition belongs to the school? Why consider a boy hopeless or degenerate because he commits a moral offense? Do we consider him intellectually hopeless or defective because of his errors in spelling or arithmetic? Julia Richman, "Proceedings of  the National Education Association," 

• The Unmoral Christian Revisited by Fr. Stephen Freeman
• "No Stumbling Blocks Through Christian Love"
• The Spiritual Foundation of Morality
• Experience Victory Over Sexual Immorality by Joseph Prince

Badges

       Everywhere on the streets one meets men, from the gray-haired veteran to the half-developed beau, all parading on breast or coat lapel some distinctive mark of membership in some association. There are medals with ribbons, medals without ribbons, and ribbons without medals. There are buttons; big buttons and little buttons; silk buttons and metal buttons. There are pins, gold and silver and plated; every imaginable kind of pin. And these are worn by ladies and misses of all rank and quality, down to the little silver cross of the King's Daughters, so familiar everywhere. Nobody seems ashamed to own membership in these various societies and alliances. Men parade the streets under banners and flags, with uniforms, and distinctive feathers in their caps, and are not ashamed to acknowledge their favorite organizations. And yet there are many persons who seem to be ashamed to own their Lord and to confess His cause. The Mid-Continent.

• Badges of Honor
• Are only a few people going to be saved? 

Background Of Light

There is often great advantage in a position of obscurity from which to look out on the world. The lace-weavers of Nottingham founded a great industry in caves, as described below:

       This great (lace) industry here began in this way: There is, or was, originally, a long, high bank of very soft sandstone on the north bank of the river Trent, pointing to the sun. In this soft sandstone the early Britons dug caves. They dug them deep and wide and wonderful in construction. It is said that even now the city of caves under the ground is almost as large as the broad and populous city on top of the ground. In case of invasion or conquest these cave-dwellers would retreat underground and defy pursuit. It is the boast of the people of Nottingham that their ancestors were never really conquered by any one. The weaving of laces came about here in this way: The half or wholly savage women sitting at the mouths of these caves and holding their threads against the sun with the darkness behind them could see the fine threads better, and so could do finer and better work than any other women in western Europe. And their immunity from conquest and consequent interruption in their peculiar industry fastened it here and kept it well forward.  Joaquin Miller, The Independent.

• Moving From Spectator to Owner by Billy Lowe 

Byzantine Saints

Description of Illustration: Eastern Orthodox, Saints, halos, watercolor, crosses, copy of Byzantine paintings

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Lantern Banner for Retreats

Description of Illustration: text, "By the Light of the Lantern, Ask us what you want to know", black and white clip art, simple drawing of a lantern

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Acquaintances

   If we could prove by statistics the number of acquaintances a man had fifty years ago, and those which the modern man has, the difference would be enormous. The tendency is everywhere to enlarge one's circle  ambitious people with discernment, but the foolish, blindly, without any interest  or inclination to guide them. I once heard a woman announce with pride, "I have 2,000 visits to make this winter." She flaunted this fact before her less favored friends, who had only 1,000 names on their visiting lists. Could there be anything more futile than this thirst for increasing one's bowing acquaintances? What useless ballast are these interminable lists, in which no place is left for  an hour's intelligent or affectionate discussion. The habit of going from drawing-room to drawing-room gives certain persons a style in conversation that is as flat as a well-drest stone, not one spontaneous word in it, not an angle, not a defined form! Dora Melegari, "Makers of Sorrow and Makers of Joy." 

So, it appears as though there has always been some version or another of twitter feeds or facebook friends? (grin)

• Assessing True Friendship 

Acknowledgment

       Pyrrhus, King of Epirus, was kind and courteous to his army, both to officers and soldiers. He shared the toils and hardships of those who were under his command. He gave them, too, their share of the glory which he acquired, by attributing his success to their courage and fidelity. At one time, after some brilliant campaign in Macedonia, some persons in his army compared his progress to the flight of an eagle. "If I am an eagle," replied Pyrrhus, "I owe it to you, for you are the wings by means of which I have risen so high."

• Body of Christ
• The Church
• The Eagle Analogy and Our Christian Walk
• The Bride of Christ
• The Grace of God In Courtesy
  

Achievement

The Denver Republican recently contained this brief account of a farmer working heroically on a one-man railroad, and remarked that it is typical of the individual spirit that has achieved great things in the West:

       The story of the Kansas farmer, who, with a scraper and a pair of mules, is building a fifty-mile railroad, would indicate that the supply of courageous men is not entirely exhausted.

       The farmer who is tackling this tremendous job alone and who is serenely indifferent to all the jeers of his neighbors, scorned to admit defeat when he could not interest any one with capital in the road which he deemed necessary. He went to work with such material as he had at hand and,  somehow, even without seeing the man or knowing aught of his project, one can not help sharing the farmer's belief that he is to "carry the thing through." 

• The Discipline of Spiritual Tenacity
• The Tenacity of the Canaanite Woman?
  

Accusation Insufficient

       When Numerius, governor of the Narbonnoise Gaul, was impeached for plunder of his province, he defended himself, and denied the charge and explained it away so skilfully that he baffled his accusers. A famous lawyer thereupon exclaimed, "Caesar, who will ever be found guilty, if it is sufficient for a man to deny the charge?" To which Julian retorted, "But who will appear innocent, if a bare accusation is sufficient?" (Text.)

• 3 Ways to Respond When Slandered 
• Lay Aside the Weight of Slander
• To Tell the Truth
• The Blasphemous Sin of Defaming Others

Accomplishment

       Among the influential public men who were wild in their unreasonable prejudice against Grant and cried aloud for his dismissal, was Col. Alexander K. McClure, of Philadelphia. He could not see how the President could sustain himself if he persisted in retaining Grant. So he went to Washington to counsel with Mr. Lincoln, and urge him in the name of the people to remove Grant without delay. I will let the Colonel tell in his own way the result of his visit to the President:

"I appealed to Lincoln for his own sake to remove Grant at once, and in giving my reasons for it I simply voiced the admittedly overwhelming protest from the loyal people of the land against Grant's continuance in command. . . . When I had said everything that could be said from my standpoint, we lapsed into silence. Lincoln remained silent for what seemed a very long time. He then gathered himself up in his chair and said in a tone of earnestness that I shall never forget: "I can't spare this man; he fights." That was all he said, but I knew that it was enough, and that Grant was safe in Lincoln's hands against the countless hosts of enemies." Col. Nicholas Smith, Grant, the Man of Mystery.

• Love & Obedience
• The Best Proof of True Love for Christ
• The Connection Between Obedience And Love
• The Expedience of Obedience
  

Mental Absorption

       The anecdote is a familiar one in the history of painting, of the artist employed upon the frescoes of a dome, who stept back to see from a better point of view the work which he had done, and became so absorbed in comparing the scenes which he had depicted with the forming idea as it lay in his mind, that still proceeding backward he had reached the edge of the lofty scaffolding, when a pupil, observing his instant peril, and afraid even to shout to him, rushed forward and marred the figures with his trowel, so calling back and saving the master. The mind, engrossed in its own operation, had forgotten the body, and was treating it as carelessly as the boy treats the chip which he tosses on the wave. Richard S. Storrs.

• The Heart's Self-Absorption 

Absent-Mindedness

       A Canadian farmer, noted for his absent-mindedness, went to town one day and transacted his business with the utmost precision. He started on his way home, however, with the firm conviction that he had forgotten something, but what it was he could not recall. As he neared home, the conviction increased, and three times he stopt his horse and went carefully through his pocketbook in a vain endeavor to discover what he had forgotten. In due course he reached home and was met by his daughter, who looked at him in surprise and exclaimed, "Why, father, where have you left mother?" Leslie's Weekly.

• Forgetting God by Benjamin Shaw
• The Deadly Problem of Forgetfulness by Tom Ascol
• 10 things that can distract us from God by Colton Jansen

Useless Ability

Plutarch says that a traveler at Sparta, standing long upon one leg, said to a Lacedaemonian, "I do not believe you can do as much." "True," said he, "but a goose can."

There are many who have abilities to do greater things who are content to boast of some accomplishment as useless as standing on one leg.

• Boasting in Man Is Doubly Excluded