Sarah Winchester didn't have to be convinced of the spirit world.  The widow of the man who invented the Winchester rifle believed that the spirits of the people killed by Winchester rifles would haunt her unless they could be driven away by the sound of hammers.  So she had men construct a house built with stairways leading to nowhere and doors leading into one inch deep closets.  For 36 years carpenters labored 24 hours a day.  Eventually a house was built with 160 rooms, containing 47 fireplaces, 13 bathrooms, and 10,000 windows.  Undoubtedly, it is the strangest house ever built.

Have you ever stood on the banks of two great rivers and watched as the two merged into one?  Turbulence and white waters fight each other as the two finally settle and begin to flow.  I've often thought of that as I talk with couples about the merging of two lives--or for that matter, two families--which become one.  There is difficulty enough when two people bring different habits, cultures, and attitudes into a marriage, but when two families are blended, the factor of turbulence only multiplies.

"By the world's standard he was a failure," wrote Bernie May. "Even worse, he was a fool. 'What a waste,' his friends said when he died. 'He had everything and threw it away'" His name was William Borden, of the wealthy and famed Borden family.  His family had made millions in the milk business back at a time when money was scarce.

"If I were in charge of the world," says Lucy to good ol' Charlie Brown, "I'd change everything!"  Charlie, looking a bit puzzled, says, "That wouldn't be easy.  Where would you start?"  "I'd start with you!" says Lucy.  Changing the world usually means changing other people, whipping them into shape, making them conform to your ideal. 

I picked it up from my friend Ken Gaydos, and I suspect that he got the idea from someone he had heard.  It's concluding an interview with the question, "If you could live your life all over again, what would you do differently?" 

William Wordsworth, the English poet, wrote, "The child is the father of the man," meaning the events of childhood shape your destiny and future as an adult.  Another way of putting it is the rather old saying, "The apple doesn't fall far from the tree."

Have you ever had the urge to just break out in song?  It may have been inspired by a beautiful morning, or the check that arrived in the mail, or the phone call from a best friend.  You felt like shouting something that Handel would have written, something that would praise God from the depths of your being.

When a friend of many years became involved in an affair, Annette Lawson began asking, "Why do people walk out on good marriages for someone who is totally different from themselves and the kind of a person they would live the rest of their lives with?"  Finding answers to that question led to more than a decade of exhaustive research.  When this sociologist was asked, "What advice would you give to someone contemplating an affair?" she replied, "One thing that hasn't changed about adultery is the danger.  It really is a risky undertaking that can leave people's lives in ruins." 

When I asked the Episcopal Bishop of Liberia what was the greatest problem facing families in his country, he immediately responded:  "Unfaithfulness in marriage, in at least 90% of our homes."  The bishop gave me a straightforward answer untainted with excuses or justification.  He could well have said, "You know, we really can't help what's happening here ‑‑ it's our culture!"  Or he could have told me, "Our problems here are the result of the media and the role models which have been imported.  The rest of the world is destroying us here!"

Loving what God loves and hating what He hates never comes easy.  Do you know why?  Most of the time, our agenda and His are not moving the same way.  It's the age-old conflict of a child's will versus the will of his father.  When our first grandson began to talk, one of the first phrases that he mastered clearly was, "I want...."  But the way the youngster voiced it made it clear that he didn't need any encouragement to be assertive.  He had his own agenda, and he was intent on getting his way.