Making Life Work

By: C. Roderick Martin

    European and American politicians continue to put off making the difficult choices required to avoid a financial meltdown, the likes of which the world has not seen. To date, the actions taken amount to little more than, “kicking the proverbial can down the road.” I liken these politicians to a man jumping off a 100-story building, falling 98 floors, and yelling, “Nothing has happened to me yet!” In the years to come, many will look back on this period with great regret and say, “We should have known.”

    When the dogwood first buds, we know spring is near. A red sky in morning means bad weather is coming. When the morning dew turns to frost, is winter not imminent? Did not Christ say, “When the fig tree’s branch...

From Ronald L. Dart's Born to Win notes.

    Once upon a time there was a people who had returned to their homeland after a generation in exile. These people had been tasked by God with repairing the Temple and restoring worship.

    It wasn’t that God dwelt in houses made with hands. The Temple was symbolic, a center of worship, a reminder of who God is—really—and of what is really important about life. But life wasn’t working very well for them. They were in the middle of an economic failure—a position not unlike where we find ourselves today.

    They had been told by the prophets from Isaiah to Jeremiah to Ezekiel why they were going into exile before it actually happened, so they just might listen to a prophet this time. God sent...

From Ronald L. Dart's Born to Win Notes  

    In my years of education, from the first grade in 1940, until I graduated from high school in 1952, I don’t remember hearing of a single school shooting.

    I went off to the Navy for four years, and then to college for six years, and I still don’t recall hearing of a single school shooting. Now, it has become like an epidemic. Has something changed?

    Were there just as many school shootings in years gone by and we just didn’t hear about them? Did the media just treat them as isolated tragedies? Are we hearing about these shootings now because of the gun control movement?

    I do remember a group of kids taking shelter under a tree in a thunderstorm. They were all killed when...

By: John Klassek

    We had almost finished dinner at the restaurant when a man in a black suit approached us and asked whether he could perform a few magic tricks for us. I politely declined his offer.

    He then quite happily made his way to the next table. I couldn’t help but to curiously watch him ply his tricks there, and what he did was quite amazing. He threw a red ball into the air and it simply disappeared! The look of surprise and fascination was evident on the faces of everyone seated at that table. “Is seeing believing?” I wondered.

    A friend of mine once lamented that he had never seen any miracles in his life. He implied that our belief in what really matters might be enhanced by being witness to some supernatural...

From Ronald L. Dart's Born to Win program notes.

    Cops nationwide rank methamphetamines the number one drug they battle today. It has surpassed marijuana, cocaine, and heroin, and usage is growing by leaps and bounds. It takes people to highs they have never before experienced, and then it destroys them—physically, mentally, and morally.

    How fast is it growing? Take the town of Towanda, Pennsylvania—a little town of 3000 people. No one there had ever heard of the drug until a cooker/dealer set up shop there. Five years later, the police have identified at least 500 people who are using or cooking the drug in the county. And they don’t know about all of them. The US Attorney says the actual tally is probably “significantly worse” than...