When God told Moses to go to Pharaoh and say, "Let my people go!" he was disheartened.  Anyone who has ever walked through the Egyptian Museum in Cairo and has seen the gold and the magnificence which decorated the courts of the pharaohs can imagine in a small way how this 80-year-old man, who for the last 40 years had been a shepherd with loneliness for a companion, would feel, striding into the palace asking that some two million slaves be allowed to take a hike out of the empire.

Frank Mihalic tells the story.  An old monastery fell on hard times.  Few young men joined the monks, whose primary tasks were to chant scriptures and to spend their days in prayer.  Whereas the chapel was once filled with the praising of God ringing in their midst, only a few men blended their voices in prayer and praise.

Our life journeys take us to mountaintops and yes--through the bottoms of deep, dry valleys. In Bible times, pilgrims journeyed by foot or mule over dusty roads and paths to Jerusalem, the city set on a hill, to worship at the temple. If you’ve ever had the chance to visit that part of the world, or been in a desert, you know how critical water is. Blazing sun above, parched ground below.

The lovely Galilee in Israel is approximately fifteen miles in length and averages some five to seven miles across.  The entire Jordan valley is cradled in what was once a geographic or seismic rift that runs from the slopes of Mt. Hermon in the north to the Dead Sea some 1300 feet below sea level in the south. Galilee, however, is located about in the middle of that fault--about 700 feet below sea level.

For the person who realizes that the circumstances of life are never bigger than God, there is a short‑cut to victory.  It is one of the few shortcuts that you ever experience in life that can save you a lot of sweat and pain. It is learning the secret of praise and thanksgiving.  Thankful for what?  For the fact that I feel so low I'm looking up to see bottom?  Thankful that my job played out on me, thankful that my husband of 18 years left me for another woman?  Thankful that there aren't many jobs available for folks at my age?

You can no more have intimacy with God without prayer than you can have intimacy in marriage without communication.  Though you may have never thought of the two in relationship to each other, what makes both meaningful is much the same.  Success in both is dependent upon the quality of your relationship with the object of your affection.  When you can't communicate with your husband or wife--for whatever reason, your relationship rapidly disintegrates. Love grows cold. Warm memories are just that--recollections of the past, not realities in the present.

“I have a question,” the email read. “How can I forgive people who insulted me, lied to me and humiliated me for a long time? It was a very difficult time for me, but I could not change the situation. Now I have escaped from this hell but I have a strong desire for revenge. I want them to feel what I felt when they jeered at me.”

There are some individuals whose spirits can't be conquered. No matter how they are repressed, how they get hit, they just get up and walk, then run, then climb the heights.  They just don't know how to quit.  Such was the old man who presented his claim to Joshua in the Bible, "I am eighty-five years old!" he began," but he quickly adds, "I am still as strong today as the day Moses sent me out; I'm just as vigorous to go out to battle now as I was then."  And then he got to the bottom line: "Give me this mountain of which the Lord spoke in that day!" (Joshua 14:12 NKJV).

Suppose that Buckingham palace made an announcement, a strongly worded one, saying that it is the pleasure of Her majesty, the Queen, that henceforth, all British subjects should live in peace, that all citizens should immediately stop hating each other, that marriages should be harmonious, and that all criminals should cease and desist from all illegal activity immediately?

After He had prayed all night, Jesus called twelve men to follow Him--ordinary men who were fishermen, small businessmen, and government employees.  None were university graduates or professionals as we think of them today.  They were men with calluses on their hands, with the smell of labor on their clothes, with dust on their sandals.