Someone once said that knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit, but wisdom is not putting them in a fruit salad!  The difference between knowledge and understanding is what the Bible calls wisdom.

If we are honest, we'll admit that it can be incredibly hard to reconcile the goodness of God, with the darkness of evil that comes straight from the pit of hell.  Unbeknownst to her, Rayna's child was sexually abused. She sadly admits, "I lost a lot of faith when it all came out." 

"When God shuts one door," Don Quixote says in The Man of La Mancha, "He opens another." Or, some have said, "When God closes a door, He opens a window."  That's not actually in the Bible although the book of Proverbs says that when a person lives his life in alignment with God's ways, God will direct His path (Proverbs 3:5-6). 

We all have good days and bad days.  But when someone you love is suffering with chronic illness, bad days take on a whole new meaning.  We often don't know what to do or say.

Isobel Kuhn was a truly intrepid woman.  Born in 1901, she was one of a generation of Christian missionaries who seemed to know no sacrifice too great to bring hope in Jesus to the most remote areas of the world.  Kuhn went with her husband, John, to northeastern China to reach the Lisu people, although much of the time Isobel labored alone with her young son in a mountainous village.

Have you ever imagined what you would ask for if you could have three wishes that would be granted?

The prominent psychiatrist Dr. Karl Menninger was convinced that the importance of hope lies in its connection to human survival. Hospital chaplains agree that as long a person has hope that they will live, they can endure great amounts of suffering. Sometimes we associate hope with wishes, which have a light quality to them. But hope is more guttural, like gritting your teeth. It provides the inertia to keep going through the dark. Hope can be more powerful than the strongest medicine, bringing life where death seems inevitable.

Debbie and I had a business meeting planned over coffee. I had my agenda in mind, my materials with me when, not a few moments into our conversation, I realized what the real purpose of our meeting was to be.  "My twin sister just committed suicide," she said.  Suddenly, everything changed. Nothing mattered more to me in that moment than listening to my colleague.  I listened and prayed with her.  I don't know if the original business arrangement I wanted to propose that day will ever come about, but I know that God's purpose for my meeting that day was to show His love to a hurting person.

My dad used to tell a story of a woman who was bitten by a dog suspected of having rabies.  She was rushed to a hospital where she was treated and left waiting in a room until it could be determined whether or not the dog had rabies.   A young doctor passing by the room noticed that the woman was muttering to herself, visibly shaken by the trauma of what had happened.  He also noticed that she was writing something. "Are you writing your will or funeral instructions?" asked the young doctor.  "Oh, no!" she replied.  "Just in case I do have rabies, I'm making a list of the people I want to bite before I die." 

You might hear a parent describe their child by saying something like, "He's always been sneaky; don't believe anything he says."  One pitfall of labeling both others and ourselves is that labels tend to enforce the behavior they identify.  A child who is consistently called a liar will begin to think of himself as a liar.