Guidelines For Living Devotional

Have you ever stood on the banks of two great rivers and watched them merge?  When two rivers come together, there is a great deal of turbulence before the waters flow smoothly.  That's the way it often is when two become one and forge a new family.

My son, Steve, is a rock climber, something that is much too much for me.  I'm like Sir Francis Chichester, who said, "I will lift mine eyes unto the hills but I will not take my carcass thither."  Anyway, Steve and two of his friends were climbing the highest peak in Switzerland when they stopped to catch their breath and noticed three climbers on the face of an incline a short distance from where they were.  As they watched, the lead climber suddenly lost his footing and fell.

"We took on Goliath!" advertises a small business whose product is overshadowed by a major manufacturer.  The David versus Goliath syndrome means the little guy goes against the giant.  There are times when the little guy goes against the big one and gets flattened like a steamroller does a stray cat.  But what's the real story behind the confrontation of David with Goliath long ago?

A reporter from a Toronto newspaper was asked to do a story on garages which made unreasonable charges.  The reporter pulled a couple wires lose in the electrical system of his car and drove into garages asking for an estimate on repairs which varied from $25 to over $400.  After he got the estimates, he declined to have the work done, drove around the corner and hooked up the wires, and went on  to the next garage.  He pulled into the thirteenth garage and explained the problem‑‑a severe miss in the engine so Cecil Baynton poked around for a few minutes and spotted the problem, plugged in the wires, and the car was running like new.  "How much do I owe you?" asked the reporter.  "Oh, nothing at all!"  "Surely I must owe you something," countered the reporter (whose identity wasn't known to Cecil).  "Naw," he said, "I'm a Christian and run an honest shop!"  He refused payment.

Your bank's cash machine has gone berserk, giving out 20's as if they were 5's, yet your receipt shows no sign of overpayment.  You immediately know that something is wrong.  You asked for a withdrawal of $100, but it gave you $400.  What do you do?  Would you  a) Use the emergency telephone to alert the bank.  b) Take the money and run,  or c) Call your friends and tell them to get back there too, as you go to the end of the line for a second run at the machine yourself?

When we fail to remember the past, we are condemned to repeat our mistakes and failures, whether it be nationally, personally, or spiritually.  Do you believe that?  Even before the alphabet was developed in the Tigris-Euphrates river valley, parents passed on to their children the truths which they wanted preserved.  Oral history, we call it today.  Sometimes the stories were myths but most of them were factual—who did what and what happened to whom.  Those oral traditions included God's dealings with people, and family history—battles that were fought, marriages which produced offspring, and cataclysmic events such as earthquakes, famines, and floods.

It was not without some scientific basis that the prophet Micah, some seven centuries before Christ, exclaimed, "Who is a God like you, who pardons sin and forgives the transgression of the remnant of his inheritance?"  Micah believed that God would have compassion and would "hurl all our iniquities into the depths of the sea" (Micah 7:18-19).

Long ago the writer of Scripture told us that he who does not offend in word or deed is a perfect man; and obviously, none of us qualifies.  No matter how loving or kind you are, sooner or later you offend someone.  You say or do something you know is wrong.  More likely it is a protracted dalliance with your conscience, but then you crash and burn.  That's when you come to the fork in the road.  Do you do what is convenient and try to deny the whole issue, or admit it and find help?  Sweeping the wrong aside, justifying yourself as being "human," is the path of convenience, and it's a well trod one, but it isn't a lasting solution which heals your brokenness.

What you say can get you into far more trouble than what you do!  Have you discovered that?   It's much like the advice that the mother whale gave her young:  "It's when you are spouting that you always get into trouble!"

Since the days that Christians worshipped in the catacombs to avoid persecution, the fish has been a symbol of Christianity, just as the star of David is a symbol of Judaism and the crescent symbolizes Islam.  Visitors to the Calixitus catacombs outside of Rome, see the symbol carved in the limestone walls where Christians once met and worshipped.  Many throughout the world still display the fish—whether it is lapel pin or a small insignia on the bumper of a car—to indicate their faith as Christians.