Pastoral Resources

Unamuno, the Spanish philosopher, tells about the Roman aqueduct at Segovia, in his native Spain. It was built in A.D. 109. For eighteen hundred years, it carried cool water from the mountains to the hot and thirsty city. Nearly sixty generations of men drank from its flow.

Then came another generation, a recent one, who said, “This aqueduct is so great a marvel that it ought to be preserved for our children, as a museum piece. We shall relieve it of its centuries-long labor.”

They did; they laid modern iron pipes. They gave the ancient bricks and mortar a reverent rest. And the aqueduct began to fall apart. The sun beating on the dry mortar caused it to crumble. The bricks and stone sagged and threatened to fall. What ages of service could not destroy idleness disintegrated.

Roman centurions were non-commissioned officers who commanded battle groups called “centuries,” each comprising at least 100 men. Akin to sergeants in a modern army, centurions often led Rome’s local police forces in occupied territories.

Centurions were responsible for keeping track of individuals who posed a threat to Rome’s security. Because Jesus drew thousands of people to hear Him, He was perhaps kept under surveillance. That may account for the accurate knowledge that one officer seemed to have of Him (Luke 7:1-10).

In ancient Rome, crowds by the tens of thousands would gather in the Coliseum to watch as Christians were torn apart by wild animals. Paul Rader, commenting on his visit to this famous landmark, said, “I stood uncovered to the heavens above, where He sits for whom they gladly died, and asked myself, ‘Would I, could I, die for Him tonight to get this gospel to the ends of the earth?’” Rader continued, “I prayed most fervently in that Roman arena for the spirit of a martyr, and for the working of the Holy Spirit in my heart, as He worked in Paul’s heart when He brought him on his handcuffed way to Rome.” Those early Christians “lived on the threshold of heaven, within a heartbeat of home, no possessions to hold them back.”

This December 24, the Pope will declare the beginning of the Year of Jubilee, and four special “Holy Doors” will be opened in Rome with the most important being in St. Peter’s Basilica. People from all over the world—an expected 30 million or more—will make a pilgrimage to Rome during 2000 seeking forgiveness of all past sins by walking through the doorways, which are opened only during Jubilee years. Many will travel thousands of miles, sacrificing time and money, in an effort to obtain eternal life. For these seekers, Rome is the place to be in 2000.

The Jubilee occurs every 25 years, but the dawn of a new millennium is bringing much more attention to this particular Year of Jubilee and will bring a greater number of pilgrims.

A United Artists executive, dismissing the suggestion that Ronald Reagan be offered the starring role in the movie, The Best Man in 1964: “Reagan doesn’t have the Presidential look.”

Q: Oswald Chambers said that the root of all sin is the suspicion that God is not good. Isn’t it true that somehow we’ve got a generation of kids -- and perhaps their parents as well -- who think that God is not good, that sin is attractive, and that God is a type of kill joy?

A: I think that’s true. And that’s why, in my relationship with my own children, I have hammered home the idea that within every negative precept - every “Thou shalt not” -- there are always two positive principles. One, God gives them to protect us. And second, He gives them to provide. He’s not a cosmic killjoy who wants to take the fun out of life.

My new book has many illustrations of this. One is the story of a high school guy who wanted to go swimming with his girlfriend at midnight. The neighbors down the block had a pool, and he knew it. So they ran down there and scaled the fence even though there were No Trespassing and Do Not Enter signs. Just as he hit the diving board, the girl yelled, but it was too late. There was only a foot of water in the pool. He broke his neck, and he’s in therapy to this day. He didn’t realize that the signs on the fence - the precepts - would have protected him.

You never know how much you really believe anything until its truth or falsehood becomes a matter of life and death. It is easy to say you believe a rope to be strong as long as you are merely using it to cord a box. But suppose you had to hang by that rope over a precipice. Wouldn’t you then first discover how much you really trusted it?

A study conducted by The Roper Organization for High Adventure Ministries in 1990 found that the moral behavior of born again Christians actually worsened after their conversions. Examined were incidences of illegal drug use, driving while intoxicated and marital infidelity.

The problem can be solved, says one researcher, with a new commitment to accountability and discipleship.

Once there was a brier growing in a ditch and there came along a gardener with his spade. As he dug around it and lifted it up the brier said to itself, “What is he doing? Doesn’t he know I am a worthless brier?” But the gardener took it into his garden and planted it amid his flowers, while the brier said, “What a mistake he has made planting me among these beautiful roses.” Then the gardener came once more and made a slit in the brier with his sharp knife. He grafted it with a rose and when summer came lovely roses were blooming on that old brier. Then the gardener said, “Your beauty is not due to what came out but to what I put in.”

There is a natural, logical kind of loving that loves lovely things and lovely people. That’s logical. But there is another kind of loving that doesn’t look for value in what it loves, but that CREATES value in what is loves. Like Rosemary’s rag doll.

When Rosemary, my youngest child, was three, she was given a little rag doll, which quickly became an inseparable companion. She had other toys that were intrinsically far more valuable, but none that she loved like she loved the rag doll.

Soon the rag doll became more and more rag and less and less doll. It also became more and more dirty. If you tried to clean the rag doll, it became more ragged still. And if you didn’t try to clean the rag doll, it became dirtier still. The sensible thing to do was to trash the rag doll. But that was unthinkable for anyone who loved my child. If you loved Rosemary, you loved the rag doll—it was part of the package.

“If anyone says ‘I love God’ yet hates his brother or sister, he is a liar,” (I John 4:20) “love me, love my rag dolls,” says God, “including the one you see when you look in the mirror. This is the first and greatest commandment.”

- Ian Pitt-Watson

Benjamin Franklin once said, "The sentence which has most influenced my life is, 'Some persons grumble because God placed thorns among roses. Why not thank God because He placed roses among thorns?' I first read it when but a mere lad. Since that day it has occupied a front room in my life and has given it an optimistic trend." To be meek is to have a disposition to see the roses among the thorns, rather than to complain about the thorns among the roses. Which do you see? Your answer will help you to judge whether you possess that meekness of which our Savior spoke.

When I was attending St. Louis University, my wife and I lived in a furnished dormitory apartment. Returning from class one day, I was dumbfounded by what I saw when I entered the apartment. Much of the living-room furniture had been rearranged, and the rug was draped over and into the kitchen sink. In fact, part of the rug was down inside the drain. I tried to get it out but finally had to admit defeat and seek help.

As I was waiting for the elevator, my next-door neighbor appeared, and I told him about my strange predicament. He looked puzzled for a moment, then began laughing uproariously. He took me into his apartment, where I was confronted by three worn-out maintenance workers who were trying to unclog his sink. They had fed a plumber’s electric snake down his drain to clean out the pipes, but apparently the spiraling bore had made an immediate U-turn, come out of our drain, traveled across our apartment and snagged our rug.

Convinced the pipes were free of obstruction, the workers had reversed the snake, and our rug was dragged, along with our furniture, into the kitchen. The workers had been trying to pull it through all morning.

Coming from a big city, my friend David wasn’t prepared for the approach rural Maine businessmen take toward their customers. Shortly after David moved there, he rented a rototiller. The store owner showed him how it worked and explained that the charge was not based on how many hours he had it out, but rather how long it was actually used. Looking over the tiller for some kind of meter, David asked, “How will you know how long I’ve used it?”

With a puzzled look, the owner simply said, “You tell me.”

A heavy rain had been falling as a man drove down a lonely road. As he rounded a curve, he saw an old farmer surveying the ruins of his barn. The driver stopped his car and asked what had happened. “Roof fell in,” said the farmer. “Leaked so long it finally just rotted through.” “Why in the world didn’t you fix it before it got that bad?” asked the stranger. “Well, sir,” replied the farmer, “it just seemed I never did get around to it. When the weather was good, there weren’t no need for it, and when it rained, it was too wet to work on!”

The next time a committee is appointed and the committee names several task forces to do its job, think of this story:

To highlight its annual picnic one year, a company rented two racing shells and challenged a rival company to a boat race. The rival company accepted. On the day of the picnic, everyone entered into the spirit of the event. Women wore colorful summer dresses and big, floppy hats. Men wore straw skimmers and white pants. Bands played and banners waved. Finally the race began. To the consternation of the host company, the rival team immediately moved to the front and was never headed. It won by 11 lengths.

The management of the host company was embarrassed by its showing and promptly appointed a committee to place responsibility for the failure and make recommendations to improve the host team’s chances in a rematch the following year. The committee appointed several task forces to study various aspects of the race. They met for three months and issued a preliminary report. In essence, the report said that the rival crew had been unfair.

“They had eight people rowing and one coxswain steering and shouting out the beat,” the report said. “We had one person rowing and eight coxswains.” The chairman of the board thanked the committee and sent it away to study the matter further and make recommendations for the rematch. Four months later the committee came back with a recommendation. “Our guy has to row faster,” it said.

Rubenstien, the great musician said, “If I omit practice one day, I notice it, if two days, my friends notice it, if three days, the public notices it.

Rudyard Kipling once wrote about families, “all of us are we—and everyone else is they.” A family shares things like dreams, hopes, possessions, memories, smiles, frowns, and gladness...A family is a clan held together with the glue of love and the cement of mutual respect. A family is shelter from the storm, a friendly port when the waves of life become too wild. No person is ever alone who is a member of a family.

A farmer inherited a rice field. The first year, the water covered his land so well that he had an abundant harvest. In fact, it even overflowed into his neighbor's field, making it fertile also. But he began to fret because his neighbor's field became as productive as his own. He decided that the water was part of his inheritance and belonged exclusively to him, so he cut it off from his neighbor's field the next year. The result? His own field was flooded and his crop ruined.

The story is told of a woman who once showed the famous art critic John Ruskin a costly handkerchief on which a blot of ink had been dropped. The handkerchief was ruined, complained the woman, and nothing was left to do except throw it away. Ruskin said nothing, but took the handkerchief with him. Not long afterward, the woman received it back, but it was so changed she could hardly believe it was the original. Using the blot as a basis, Ruskin had created around it a beautiful and artistic design, changing what was ruined into a thing of beauty and joy.

Historian’s Rule: Any event, once it has occurred, can be made to appear inevitable by a competent historian.

Wolf’s Law: Those who don’t study the past will repeat its errors. Those who do study it will find other ways to err. - Charles Wolf, Jr.

1. Hope for the best, but prepare for the worst.

2. Look first, then act.

3. When you do act, act aggressively.

4. Seek help.

5. Don’t get locked on a detail.

6. No matter how bad things get, be truthful.

7. Look for the silver lining.

John D. Rockefeller’s three simple rules for anyone who wants to become rich:

1. Go to work early.

2. Stay at work late.

3. Find oil.

American poet and Pulitzer Prize-winner Edwin Arlington Robinson used to spend his summers at the MacDowell Colony near Peterborough, New Hampshire. Arriving at breakfast one morning, he found the writer Nancy Byrd Turner and a new member of the colony already seated at his table. “This is Mr. Robinson,” said Turner to her companion.

“Robinson! Not E. A. Robinson—not the Mr. Robinson?” gushed the other woman.

There followed a long, uncomfortable pause, then Robinson replied, “A Mr. Robinson.”

If somebody says, “I hope you won’t mind me telling you this,” it’s pretty certain you will. One of the best ways to end a rumor is to ask if you may quote the individual passing it along. If the person says no, it’s possible that the rumor is just idle talk. If the person answers yes, you should contact the gossip’s subject to verify the story you heard. Also, if you like to spread news about others, ask yourself if you would want someone to quote you. A negative answer is a good sign you should keep your lips sealed on the matter. And a positive response should lead not to back-fence reporting but to up-front confronting.

Longing to leave her poor Brazilian neighborhood, Christina wanted to see the world. Discontent with a home having only a pallet on the floor, a washbasin, and a wood-burning stove, she dreamed of a better life in the city. One morning she slipped away, breaking her mother’s heart. Knowing what life on the streets would be like for her young, attractive daughter, Maria hurriedly packed to go find her. On her way to the bus stop she entered a drugstore to get one last thing. Pictures. She sat in the photograph booth, closed the curtain, and spent all she could on pictures of herself. With her purse full of small black-and-white photos, she boarded the next bus to Rio de Janiero. Maria knew Christina had no way of earning money. She also knew that her daughter was too stubborn to give up. When pride meets hunger, a human will do things that were before unthinkable. Knowing this, Maria began her search. Bars, hotels, nightclubs, any place with the reputation for street walkers or prostitutes. She went to them all. And at each place she left her picture—taped on a bathroom mirror, tacked to a hotel bulletin board, fastened to a corner phone booth. And on the back of each photo she wrote a note.

It wasn’t too long before both the money and the pictures ran out, and Maria had to go home. The weary mother wept as the bus began its long journey back to her small village. It was a few weeks later that young Christina descended the hotel stairs. Her young face was tired. Her brown eyes no longer danced with youth but spoke of pain and fear. Her laughter was broken. Her dream had become a nightmare. A thousand times over she had longed to trade these countless beds for her secure pallet. Yet the little village was, in too many ways, too far away. As she reached the bottom of the stairs, her eyes noticed a familiar face. She looked again, and there on the lobby mirror was a small picture of her mother. Christina’s eyes burned and her throat tightened as she walked across the room and removed the small photo. Written on the back was this compelling invitation. “Whatever you have done, whatever you have become, it doesn’t matter. Please come home.” She did.

For fifteen years Jim Fixx, author of the 1978 bestseller, The Complete Book of Running, ran eighty miles a week. He appeared to be in tip-top shape. It didn’t seem possible that a man his age could be in better condition. Yet at age fifty-two Fixx died of a massive heart attack while running alone on a Vermont road. His wife,

Alice, later said she was certain that Fixx had no idea he suffered from a heart problem. Why? Because he refused to get regular checkups. After Jim Fixx’s death, doctors speculated that his heart was so strong he may not have had the telltale chest pains or shortness of breath that usually signal arterial heart disease!

The story is told of a young girl who accepted Christ as her Savior and applied for membership in a local church. “Were you a sinner before you received the Lord Jesus into your Life?” inquired an old deacon. “Yes, sir,” she replied. “Well, are you still a sinner?” “To tell you the truth, I feel I’m a greater sinner than ever.” “Then what real change have you experienced?” “I don’t quite know how to explain it,” she said, “except I used to be a sinner running after sin, but now that I am saved I’m a sinner running from sin!” she was received into the fellowship of the church, and she proved by her consistent life that she was truly converted.

A little girl, in the days when the conversion of children was not the subject of as much prayer as now, applied for membership in a Baptist church. "Were you a sinner," asked an old deacon, "before this change of which you now speak?" "Yes, sir," she replied. "Well, are you now a sinner?" "Yes, sir, I feel I am a greater sinner than ever." "Then what change is there in you?" "I don't quite know how to explain it," she said, "but I used to be a sinner running after sin, and now I hope I am a sinner running from sin."

Percentage of American’s who own running shoes but don’t run: 87%

Clifton Fadiman, in The Little, Brown Book of Anecdotes, tells a story about Vladimir Nabokov, the Russian-born novelist who achieved popular success with his novels Lolita (1955), Pale Fire (1962) and Ada (1969).

One summer in the 1940s, Nabokov and his family stayed with James Laughlin at Alta, Utah, where Nabokov took the opportunity to enlarge his collection of butterflies and moths. Fadiman relates:

“Nabokov’s fiction has never been praised for its compassion; he was single-minded if nothing else. One evening at dusk he returned from his day’s excursion saying that during hot pursuit near Bear Gulch he had heard someone groaning most piteously down by the stream.

“‘Did you stop?’ Laughlin asked him.

“‘No, I had to get the butterfly.’

“The next day the corpse of an aged prospector was discovered in what has been renamed, in Nabokov’s honor, Dead Man’s Gulch.”

While people around us are dying, how often we chase butterflies!