1) What is too much for one, enough for two, and nothing
at all for three?
2) A child is born in Boston, Massachusetts to parents who
were both born in Boston, Massachusetts. The child is not
a United States citizen. How is this possible?
3) There is a town in Texas where 5% of all the people living
there have unlisted phone numbers. If you selected 100 names
at random from the town's phone directory, on average, how
many of these people would have unlisted phone numbers?
4) Over on the hill there is a little green house.
Inside the green house there is a little white house.
Inside the little white house there is a little red house.
Inside the little red house there are a lot of little babies.
5) All that I see, is all that I want
Yet what I see is nothing I need
I am pleased with nothing, and so seek I must do
Until my desire is quenched, I'll never be through.
What am I?
6) I dig out tiny caves, and store gold and silver
in them. I also build bridges of silver and make
crowns of gold. They are the smallest you could
imagine. Sooner or later everybody needs my
help, yet many people are afraid to let me help them.
Who am I?
7) To some I can hold treasure,
To others most displeasure.
I am always near you,
Yet always far.
I am done when I begin,
And begin when I end.
What am I?
*Answers are located in "comments"
for your convenience & felicity.
ANSWERS TO RIDDLES:
ReplyDelete1) A secret
2) The child was born before 1776.
3) None. You will not find unlisted
phone numbers in a phone directory.
4) A WATERMELON
5) GREED
6) A Dentist
7) THE FUTURE
The Warning is the Difference
ReplyDeleteHe was in Singapore when he got word of a massive earthquake in the Indian Ocean and the possibility of a killer tsunami that could be headed for land, including his own village in India. He knew what he had to do. Desperately, he tried to reach his family there by means of a cell phone, and they answered. He warned them about the approaching danger, and they in turn warned the entire village of some 150 people. Within minutes they were all headed for high ground. The tsunami did hit that village full force. The homes were destroyed, the boats were destroyed, but every single person from that village survived.
People that Indian man cared about, people who otherwise would have died, are alive today for one simple reason - because of one man who gave the warning.
For every person you care about, every person in your personal world, whether they live or die eternally depends on that same urgent act of love - someone giving the warning. Warning that God's judgment for our lifetime of sinning is coming our way - all of us. The Bible makes clear that "man is destined to die once, and after that to face judgment" (Hebrews 9:27). We're all guilty of rebellion against God; making ourselves the center of our lives when our Creator is the only One who belongs there. But the warning of God's Word declares not only the bad news of the inevitable death penalty for our sin, but the wonderful Good News of where the high ground is. It's that hill where Jesus died to pay the death penalty that we all deserve. The lives of people around you can literally be saved forever if someone gives them the warning.
To be sure, God is the One who draws them to Jesus, who saves the lost. But we're His plan for pointing them His direction. And our silence is a fatal silence. That's why God has made our responsibility so clear in a number of places in Scripture, including our word for today from the Word of God. In Ezekiel 3, beginning with verse 16, God's challenge to His prophet mirrors what He is expecting of us who know the way to eternal safety. "I have made you a watchman." You're the one on the wall who can see the danger coming and whom God holds responsible for warning the people around you.
He goes on to say, "When I say to a wicked man, 'You will surely die,' and you do not warn him or speak out to dissuade him from his evil ways in order to save his life, that wicked man will die for his sin, and I will hold you accountable for his blood." Whether or not you think you're responsible to warn the people you know, God obviously thinks you are, and will judge you accordingly. Like that man who called his village to warn them, God has given you life-saving information - information which they must have in order to have a chance at heaven. You know it. They don't. It's up to you in the power of God's Spirit. Whatever consequences you're afraid of if you tell them about Jesus, can't even compare to the awful consequences if you don't.
Just before God spoke this challenge, He led His messenger to just spend some time among the people the he was being sent to rescue. Ezekiel says, "I sat among them for seven days - overwhelmed." Look at the spiritual needs all around you. Let God give you His eyes to see what He sees when He looks at the people you know - the future inhabitants of hell - unless they find out how to get to heaven.
Let God overwhelm you, even break your heart for the precious people within your reach. Pray for God to open their heart, to open a door for you to speak to them, and to open your mouth when He does. The wave is coming, but they don't have to die if you will just give them the warning.
To find out how you can begin a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, please visit:
http://www.yoursforlife.net/alpha or call 1-888-966-7325.
Frigid temperatures and wintry blends of snow and sleet frequent weather reports for many this time of year. Time spent in the pungent cold of Michigan allows me to relate with a shudder, albeit now from a warmer, southern place. But the worst descriptions of the searching, biting cold bring to mind a less personal memory.
ReplyDelete“Foggier yet, and colder!” describes Charles Dickens in A Christmas Carol. “Piercing, searching, biting cold. If the good Saint Dunstan had but nipped the Evil Spirit’s nose with a touch of such weather as that, instead of using his familiar weapons, then indeed he would have roared to lusty purpose. The owner of one scant young nose, gnawed and mumbled by the hungry cold as bones are gnawed by dogs, stooped down at Scrooge's keyhole to regale him with a Christmas carol: but at the first sound of--
‘God bless you, merry gentleman!
May nothing you dismay!’
Scrooge seized the ruler with such energy of action, that the singer fled
in terror, leaving the keyhole to the fog and even more congenial frost.”(1)
The irony within this icy picture is not missed on Dickens’s careful detail. In the piercing, wearying cold stands the cheerful caroler while warm and sheltered sits the cold, cantankerous Scrooge.
The contrasting hearts Dickens paints in this scene strike with an idea ripe for the reflections of a new year, particularly for those who enter with greater apprehension than hope. Life often presents the irony of this caroler. Some of the warmest hearts belong to lives that have been surrounded by the darkest and coldest days. The words of the caroler and the familiar lines of God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen amplify the contrast. This much loved hymn tells a mighty story for even the bleakest of lives.
God rest ye merry, gentlemen
Let nothing you dismay
Remember Christ our Saviour
Was born was born on Christmas Day
To save us all from Satan’s power
When we were gone astray
O tidings of comfort and
joy
God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen is not an address to “merry gentlemen.” It is not because Scrooge was grumpy that the words of the carol were unbefitting. In fact, the word “merry” has come to mean something quite different than it did for the first hearers of this hymn. Where it now connotes jollity, it once meant “mighty” or “strong.” Similarly, the word “rest” also signified the notion of being kept or made well. Thus, in more contemporary English, we might pronounce the title of this carol in the manner of a prayer: “God make you mighty.” What specifically makes us mighty is relayed in the story the song retells:
From God our heavenly Father a blessed angel came;
And unto certain shepherds brought tidings of the same;
How that in Bethlehem was born the Son of God by name.
O tidings of comfort and joy, comfort and joy.
For those living in cold and harsh realities, remembering that Christ the Savior was born to save the lost is far more than a thought that warms
them; it is more like the sun that provides the very capacity for life. Mary’s song was not sung without the reality of hard times ahead; being pregnant without a husband bore the stigma of adultery and the risk of death. But she sang because the angel gave her a mighty story to sing about: “You will be with child and give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High... And his kingdom will never end" (Luke 1:30-33). We remember this ancient story because it brings life and breath into our own. The “comfort and joy” promised by the angel and proclaimed in this song is not an outburst of seasonal cheer, nor a call to passive contentment. Comfort comes from the mighty encounter of knowing the Son of God by name, and joy is the startling wonder of finding Christ near. Whether in the midst of warmth or darkness, Christ is here, the Son has been given; God has made us mighty.
Jill Carattini is managing editor of
A Slice of Infinity at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Atlanta, Georgia.
(1) Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol (Cheswold, Delaware: Prestwick House, 2005), 17.
For further reading on the crossroads of hope and dismay, we recommend Stuart McAllister's lasted contribution to "Just Thinking". "At the Border Crossing of Doubt and Hope" can be found by visiting the following link:
http://www.rzim.org/GlobalElements/GFV/tabid/449/ArticleID/10103/CBModuleId/881/Default.aspx
I am not going to be original this time, so all I am going to say that your blog rocks, sad that I don't have suck a writing skills
ReplyDelete