Making Life Work

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

    If you asked 100 people where the expression “free love” came from, I doubt you would find more than one person who knows. I surely didn’t. I thought it originated back in the 60s with the flower children. But I was wrong. The term originated in the 1850s in a religious commune in Oneida, New York. Called the Oneida Community by some and the Oneida Experiment by others, it was an experiment with sexual freedom under religious auspices, and quoting Scripture for its justification.

    I’m not sure what sent me looking for this, but I found an article in Touchstone Magazine titled, The Oneida Experiment, What We Have Discovered About Not-So-Free Love, by Frederica Mathewes- Green. Oneida was founded...

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...

By: Hugh Buchanan

    It was on a stiflingly hot day in July that Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain found himself on a wooded hillside in Southern Pennsylvania. Positioned there by his superior officer with 300 men, the remnant of the 20th Maine Regiment, his task was to defend Little Round Top, a small hill that protected the left flank of the Army of the Potomac. To lose this ground would mean the loss of the battle, loss of the army, the loss of the war, the loss of the Union. It was the second day of the Battle of Gettysburg in the American Civil War.

    He took stock of his assets and liabilities. The 20th Maine held the superior position. Chamberlain’s men were experienced war veterans and were committed to their cause. On the other hand,...

By: Mardy Cobb

    What kind of example are you setting? Has anyone ever asked you this? We often resent this question when we hear it. Why? One reason: because we feel the person asking is accusing us. Another reason might be: We feel the person asking the question has no right to judge. In other words, we often want to reply, “I don’t care what you think.” By the way, we are often right about the person asking the question.

    Rather than taking offense at the thought of “example,” let’s try to see it from another angle. Example is not about other people’s opinion. Other people have opinions, and they may pass judgment. But that is an issue of judging. That is not an issue of example. We need to be careful not to let our resentment for false...

By: Hugh Buchanan

    In November of 2007 I accompanied my wife, Boni, to the funeral of Wanda, her dear lifelong friend. At the service, I experienced something remarkable and unexpected that lit up one Scripture for me in a way nothing except personal experience can do. I wasn’t close to Wanda. Although serious and sobered by the nearness of death, I was not gripped by the aching loneliness and sense of loss the death of a close friend or loved one brings.     At the service, as soon as Boni made eye contact with Wanda’s sister, they were drawn toward each other at a run, as if a magnetic force drew them. They threw their arms around each other. Their faces contorted in grimaces of anguish and grief and their eyes filled with tears. Their bodies...

By: Lenny Cacchio

    And He’s not a Democrat either. From what I know of the Man, he has better things to do than to align himself with various factions vying for political power. Ultimately, he has all of that in abundance anyway.     It’s instructive that even though Jesus held many positions in common with the Pharisees (resurrection of the dead, acceptance of all the Hebrew Scriptures and not just the Torah, belief in angels), he never once identified himself as a Pharisee. It is also instructive that he socialized with people from all backgrounds and factions, including Pharisees (Luke 11, John 3), Samaritans (John 4), people from Herod’s household (Luke 8), Roman soldiers (Matthew 8), Gentiles (Mark 7), fisherman (Matthew 4), publicans...

By: Ronald L. Dart

By: Ronald L. Dart

In the world you will have tribulation;
but be of good cheer,
I have overcome the world.

    I hope I don’t shock you too much when I say that the Bible is not a particularly comforting book. I know the hope it gives is comforting. I know the relationship with God it offers is comforting. But one night, I was paging through the Bible looking for some comfort and I wasn’t finding much. I wanted to read something to make me feel better, and I wasn’t finding it.

By: Ronald L. Dart

Is God everywhere? Is he in every leaf of every tree? Does he permeate the cosmos with his being? Is he in every blade of grass?

    Well, yes and no. God is in every blade of grass in the same way I am in a transceiver I built years ago and later sold. You might even find some of my DNA in that radio, because I got a little careless with my tools. But I am not there. I am here.

    God is in every blade of grass in the same way my wife is in the little painting she did years ago when we were playing with oils. But if you think you can put your foot on God when you walk across the grass, you are badly mistaken.

 

By: Ronald L. Dart

The secret things belong unto the LORD our God: but those things which are revealed belong unto us and to our children for ever, that we may do all the words of this law (Deuteronomy 29:29). 

    There are things about God that we are never going to understand for the simplest of reasons. They have not been revealed, and theorizing isn’t going to help very much. It is revelation that we need if we are going to understand.

    One of the things that has been revealed, in part, is the work and character of the Spirit of God, and yet even that is not well understood. A troubling set of questions surround the Holy Spirit, and they suggest that we may have taken a wrong turn somewhere and we need to retrace our steps.

By: Ronald L. Dart

"Ye therefore, beloved, seeing ye know these things before, beware lest ye also, being led away with the error of the wicked, fall from you own steadfastness."

By: Ronald L. Dart

    When God gave Abraham his great victory over the King of Elam, he was met on his return by an enigmatic figure, a priest, by the name of Melchizedek. What is of special interest about this encounter is that Abraham gave Melchizedek tithes (a tenth) of all the spoil he had taken from the opposing armies–much of it the property of the Kings of Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 14:20). Why did Abraham do that?

By: Ronald L. Dart

    If Jesus told you not to think something, would you believe Him? Or would you continue to suppose that something were true when Jesus told you plainly it was not? For example, if Jesus said, "Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets," would you assume that Jesus came to do away with the law?

    Surprisingly, many Christians think that Jesus came to destroy the law when He said specifically that He did not. He said: "Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill" (Matthew 5:17).

 
By: Ronald L. Dart

    Do you want to live forever? If there were something you could eat that would give you eternal life, would you want it? The search for a magic elixir, a fountain of youth, has preoccupied man ever since Adam was denied access to the tree of life. Legends of the ancient world told of a "Fountain of Youth." Ponce de Leon spent his life searching for it, but all he found was Florida.

    When you think about it, it is all the more strange that when Jesus finally told his disciples that there really was a "bread of life," many of them took that occasion to turn away from Him.

By: Ronald L. Dart

And God stepped out on space
And he looked around and said
"I’m lonely, I’ll make me a world." 1

    It is a simple, elegant statement of cosmology. The author, James Weldon Johnson, not only sees God as creator of everything, he imagines a motive for the act of creation. It may seem strange to think of God as lonely. But if we believe that God created all things, then we must believe that there was a time when God was alone and was not content to stay that way. This is true whether you believe God is a Trinity, a Unity, or a family composed of Father and Son. Whatever we call "God" was alone.

By: Ronald L. Dart

    There are no women in heaven," chuckled the preacher. "How do I know this? The Lord revealed it in Revelation 8:1 when He said there was silence in heaven about the space of half an hour."

    It was all very amusing, and even the ladies enjoyed a little laugh at their own expense. After all, more than one of them had "talked someone’s ear off " sometime in the past 48 hours.

    Still, there was a little hurt in the laughter of some. To them it was just one more "put-down" for women. Only this time it came from an unexpected source, their pastor, from whom they felt they had a right to expect support, not humiliation.

By: Ronald L. Dart

    The story of the Bible begins and ends with a tree. In the Garden of Eden, the Tree of Life held a central place. After the expulsion of man from the garden, we don’t hear of the tree again until the last book of the Bible.¹ There, man is in a very different environment called, "The paradise of God."² Once again the Tree of Life is central. But now there is not one tree of life, but twelve. They are on both sides of the river of life and they bear twelve kinds of fruit. Moreover, the leaves of the tree are for the healing of all people.³ It is those who do God’s commandments who have a right to the Tree of Life, and the permission to enter the City of God.⁴

By: Ronald L. Dart

    The Christian faith must seem downright confusing to an onlooker. Even the largest, seemingly the most monolithic Christian denominations are, in reality, composed of many factions. Unless you are an insider, you can remain unaware of the deep divisions that exist among Baptists, Methodists, Lutherans and even Catholics.

By: Ronald L. Dart

    Just what does it mean to "keep the Sabbath?" What should a person do on that day? Or, as some would prefer to ask, what should a person NOT do? Can you work at your normal job? What about emergencies? Can you buy groceries on the Sabbath? What if you have unexpected guests? The Sabbath is indeed a holy day, and to worship God properly requires a right view of His day.

By: Ronald L. Dart

    Is there really an ever–burning hell where sinners are tormented with fire and brimstone throughout all eternity? Is it only for the very wicked? What about the “unsaved”? The Bible tells us there is only one name given in heaven and earth whereby we must be saved–the name of Jesus. What about all those who have never heard that name? Do they go immediately to the torments of a fiery hell at death? What about babies and little children? Surely they don’t go to hell? Churches have an astonishing variety of answers to these questions, but what does the Bible say? How can we really know the truth?

By: Ronald L. Dart

“Let none be faithless to the wife of his youth. For I hate divorce,
says the Lord the God of Israel.”

    Divorce is painful. If you have been through a divorce, you need no one to tell you that. Not only do the children get hurt, there are the grandparents, the family, the friends. And who can tell of the pain, of the anger that comes in the middle of the night to the two people who once loved each other above all others?

By: Ronald L. Dart

 

 

"And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years" (Genesis 1:14-19).

    Nothing God gave to man has been used so consistently for the purpose He intended. Every civilization of man has used the sun, the moon, or both for the demarcation of time. They had no choice. Even a hunting society had to take notice of the passage of seasons. When would the animals migrate to the north and when would they return? How soon would the antlered animals make their move down from the high country? No people dependent upon the land could fail to notice that there was a time to plant and a time to harvest. Their problem was the prediction of that time, and that required the observation of the sun. It required a calendar, and some form of calendar has always been a mark of civilization.

By: Ronald L. Dart

 

    The holy days are, to me, an endless source of fascination. Every year I approach them with renewed anticipation. Long ago someone pointed out to me a simple, elegant pattern in the meaning of these days. The Passover, for example, portrays the sacrifice of Christ. The days of Unleavened Bread remind us to put sin out of our lives. Pentecost pictures the receiving of the Holy Spirit. Trumpets looks forward to the return of Christ and the resurrection. Atonement represents the binding of Satan and the whole world being "at one" with God. The Feast of Tabernacles look forward to the millennium, and the eighth day pictures the "Great White Throne" judgment.

By: Ronald L. Dart

 

"What our civilization continues to forget is that we have souls, and when souls are not fed, they distort and warp themselves. And souls today go largely unfed. Every day they must soak up the desolation of the contemporary landscape" – Edward Oakes.

By: Ronald L. Dart

    "Master," they asked Jesus, " who sinned, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind?" The logic behind the question was simple. God's creation was perfect; so for a man to be born handicapped, something must have gone wrong. Jesus' disciples simply wanted to know what had gone wrong. It is an agonizing question–one faced by the parents of every child born handicapped. Yet most of these parents handle the question better than I would have thought.

By: Ronald L. Dart

    It was the last night of the revival. The congregation was softly singing: "Just as I am," and the preacher was standing in front of the pulpit with both arms raised in invitation. He knew there were people present who needed to make a decision for Christ. "Jesus Christ could come tonight," he urged. "Will you be ready for Him?"

By: Ronald L. Dart

    At first, Philip wondered why he was here. It was not a place anyone in his right mind would choose to be. It was hot. It was dry. It was the road from Jerusalem to Gaza.

    He had finished his work in Samaria, and an angel of God had told him, "Arise, and go toward the south unto the way that goeth down from Jerusalem unto Gaza, which is desert." So, here he was, and there was nothing in sight but a chariot and its travel party. By its markings, the chariot was Ethiopian.

By: Ronald L. Dart

 

“There are two kinds of people in the world,” intoned the preacher, “the saved and the lost. There is no middle ground with God.”

    Now there is a sobering thought. If indeed there are only two kinds of people in the world, and if I am “people,” I must be either saved or lost. And if I’m not consciously aware of having been saved, then I must be lost. And if I’m lost...

By: Lenny Cacchio  

    Life comes at us. We have jobs to work, kids to chauffer, lawns to mow, meetings to attend, laundry to do, meals to prepare, crises to handle, appointments to keep, and obligations to fulfill. If your life looks like mine, you’ll have lots of Have To’s and not enough Get To’s.     It’s unhealthy having too many Have To’s, but the demands of daily living can often leave us feeling guilty about leaving some of those duties undone and escaping to a personal refuge for a short spell.     But taking a break even when the workload is full of Have To’s is in tune with what Jesus did. We see a number of instances where Jesus boards a boat and tries to sail to the other side of the lake to escape the crowds for a spell. Other...

By: Ernie Klassek

    NO, DO NOT BE SURPRISED—the time is coming when all those who are dead and buried will hear His voice and out they will come— those who have done right will rise again to life, but those who have done wrong will rise to face judgment!

    That is how J. B. Phillips rendered some words of Jesus in St. John’s Gospel.1

    St. John described a similar scenario of people coming back to life in another book: "Then the sea gave up its dead. Death and the world of the dead also gave up the dead they held. And all were judged according to what they had done." 2

    All. When we read that word we think of every human being—past, present, and future—our ancestors, people here and now, and those yet to come.

...

By: Lenny Cacchio

    The Passover is a great celebration of freedom.  To the Jewish mind, it represents both the birth of a nation and the coming out of the physical bondage of slavery.   To the Christian mind, Christ our Passover became the Lamb without blemish who died and delivered us from the bondage of sin.  Jesus told us that whoever commits sin is a slave of sin (John 8:34), and Peter tells us that we will be brought into bondage by whatever overcomes us.

    So to both the Jew and the Christian, Passover is about freedom. When the slaves of the Old South were introduced to the Gospel, the idea of freedom from slavery fired their imaginations, and they sang the words of that wonderful old spiritual “Tell ol’ Pharaoh, let my people...

By: Lenny Cacchio

Have any of the rulers or the Pharisees believed on him? - John 7:48

Are you going to believe me or your own eyes? - Groucho Marx 

    I hate to admit this, but after a major political event I am more fascinated by the journalistic commentary that follows it than the event itself.  That might be because so many political events and speeches are yawners reminiscent of college Speech 101.

    But I’m also interested in other people’s take on what happened, even though it might remind me of Groucho Marx’s line at the head of this column:  "Are you going to believe me or your own eyes?"

    Jesus had the same type of press.  He healed the sick, raised the dead, fed the multitudes, and taught a new...

By: Lenny Cacchio

    Jesus said, "My kingdom is not of this world" (John 18:36).  Of course it isn’t.  If it were, we wouldn’t have among other things a protracted and painful presidential election campaign that further exposes the fault lines in our national landscape.

    No candidate is the perfect combination of the patience of Job, the wisdom of Solomon, and the fighting spirit of David.  Nor should we expect such.  The best we can hope for is a government that provides us with security, some basic services, and fair adjudication of laws while not infringing upon our freedom to pursue our God-given purpose and talents.

    Sadly, not everyone sees it that way.  Some theories of government emphasize redistribution of wealth.  Some...

By: Lenny Cacchio

    The Middle East by reason of climate and culture is a dusty place. In Jesus’ day there was little in the way of paved roads, and consequently the feet of the sandal-wearing populous would pick up the common grime of the roads as they walked through life. 

    In addition to the dust that one would normally encounter walking, other sources of filth of a less savory kind were also in the streets of that day’s Jerusalem .  Livestock was abundant, given the contemporary need for transportation, economic necessity, and sacrifice.  Not only would the streets of Jerusalem be covered in dust and mud, Jerusalem would be awash in a mixture of dung and urine.  In a culture where the common footwear was the sandal, imagine how one’s...

By: Lenny Cacchio

"Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus." (John 11:5)

    Jesus had a special relationship with family from Bethany.  We see him teaching in their home.  He dined with them. At Lazarus death he traveled from a long way off to be with the sisters in their grief and to call Lazarus from his tomb.

    We see these sisters and brother only three times in Scripture, and each time the family appears, we notice something unique about Mary.  Every time we see Mary of Bethany, she is at Jesus feet.

In Luke 10 she sits at his feet learning the ways of God.

In John 11 she falls at his feet in honor and worship.

And in John 12 Mary is anointing his feet in an act of service.

To learn,...

By: Lenny Cacchio

    In a recent article about George Schultz National Review’s  Jay Nordingler describes a snippet of his interview with this former Secretary of State:

    "At Schultz’s side is an illuminated globe, and this prompts me to ask him about a test he would give to new U.S. Ambassadors.  ‘They’d been through all kinds of exams and so on – confirmation – and I’d say to them, "Well, there’s just one more test you have to pass. … You have to walk over to that globe and demonstrate to me that you can identify your country."  And, inevitably, they would point to the country to which they had been assigned’

    "The correct answer of, of course, was the United States – that was their country.  And Schultz’s moral was, ‘Never...

By: Lenny Cacchio

    Since 1921 our nation has recognized November 11 as a day to honor those who have served in our nation’s armed forces.  Originally designated Armistice Day as a memorial to the end of World War I, Congress renamed it Veteran’s Day in 1954 in to recognize the service of all veterans.

    Thomas Jefferson was right to acknowledge that our rights and freedoms come from God and are a gift of God, but Marine Corps Chaplain Dennis Edward O’Brian made a salient point when he said, "It is the soldier, not the reporter, who has given us freedom of the press.   It is the soldier, not the poet, who has given us freedom of speech.  It is the soldier, not the campus organizer, who has given us the freedom to demonstrate.  It is the...

By: Lenny Cacchio

Dinesh D’Souza is an author and political pundit whose newest book is entitled What’s So Great About Christianity. Note that the title does not end in a question mark. Noted atheist Christopher Hitchens recently appeared on stage with D’Souza to debate the question of religion. 

I was able to view an eight minute clip, and while I do not know how D’Souza fared in the entire debate, I do claim disappointment in how he dealt with on of Mr. Hitchens’ challenges.

Hitchens claims that the Church aided and abetted the rise of Fascism in the 20th Century. People such as Franco and Mussolini were practicing Catholics and had reached various agreements and accommodations with the Vatican regarding their policies and activities....

By: Lenny Cacchio

"Your Father knows the things you have need of before you ask Him." (Matthew 6:8 NKJV)

I am thankful that God knows what I need even before I ask, but that leads me to wonder:  "If God knows what I need before I ask, then why ask at all?"   God is good.  He’ll give me what I need.  Besides, Paul says that "we do not know what we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit Himself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered." (Romans 8:26 NKJV)

It’s tempting to think that we might bore God with things he already knows, but we run no risk of doing that.  Even though God knows everything we need, he likes to hear us talk.   In John 17, Jesus prayed the obvious:  The hour has come.  God gave Jesus...

By: Ron Saladin

    I was on my way home from work when I got the page—911. I hurriedly dialed home to hear that five year-old Christopher had a bad puncture wound under his left jaw. He had catapulted off his bicycle into the edge of a log. Lots of blood. I hurriedly asked if he was breathing okay; the answer was yes. I was 30 minutes away.

    When I arrived, I looked at the wound. It was bleeding more from the inside than the outside. My wife, Cynthia, had rolled up a cloth and put it into Christopher’s mouth to absorb some of the seeping blood. The wound looked odd—smooth tissue, almost like the inside tissue of a cheek. We were off to the emergency room at St. John’s in Washington, MO.

    The doctor suspected a broken jaw, and...

By: Lenny Cacchio  

    If I were the devil, I would plant a seed of doubt.  That would be easy to do in a skeptical age, for real miracles have an air of plausible deniability about them.  Someone is healed of a disease?  The body’s natural defenses did it.  Someone crosses your path as an answer to prayer?  Time and chance happens to all men.  You’re in need of a few bucks to pay the rent, and the exact amount shows up in the mail?  Somebody heard of your plight and wrote you a check.

    Plausible deniability affects us today as much as it did the people in Jesus day.   In spite of the great miracles Jesus performed, people still wanted a sign.  The very day after he fed a multitude by multiplying a few fishes and loaves, the very same people...

By: Lenny Cacchio

    Being honest with God to the point of being blunt is perfectly okay with him – even to the point of being uncharitable.



    "Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” (John 11:21 NKJV) These were the words of Martha after her brother Lazarus had died, and she spoke these words to the Son of God himself. If you read her comments with the proper inflection, you can sense her frustration. Jesus had failed to hurry to their side when he learned of Lazarus’ sickness. They had sent for him days before (verse 3), but the writer of the gospel, when presenting these facts, strangely juxtaposes two sentences: “Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. So, when he heard that he was sick, he stayed...

By: Lenny Cacchio

    There is a chapter in the Book of Revelation that contains a curious passage with some rarely heard phraseology.  Verses 4 - 6 of Revelation 20 read:     "I saw thrones on which were seated those who had been given authority to judge. And I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded because of their testimony for Jesus and because of the word of God. They had not worshiped the beast or his image and had not received his mark on their foreheads or their hands. They came to life and reigned with Christ a thousand years. (The rest of the dead did not come to life until the thousand years were ended.) This is the first resurrection.  Blessed and holy are those who have part in the first resurrection. The second death...

By: Lenny Cacchio  

    It seems to be an anomaly that a loving God as depicted in the Scriptures would condemn the majority of people who have ever lived to an eternity apart from him.  That at least is the idea we get from traditional Christian theology.  Speaking of Jesus, Paul said, "There is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved" (Acts 4:12 NIV). Does that imply that billions of Hindus, Buddhists, animists, agnostics, and plain old decent human beings throughout history have no hope, for by dint of birth in time and place they never quite got the Christian message?     Jesus himself once said that "no one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him" (John 6:43 NIV), while Peter wrote that God is "not...

By: Lenny Cacchio  

    On the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried out, saying, "If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink. He who believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water." (John 7:37-38 NKJV)

    In this passage, Jesus is attending the annual Feast of Tabernacles celebration in Jerusalem, one of the annual religious festivals listed in the Book of Leviticus as a time to celebrate and worship before God. Scholars tell us that in Jesus’ day, part of the festival celebration was a water ceremony, where the priest would take water from the spring-fed pool of Siloam and would pour the water on the altar.   Clearly, Jesus was using this ceremony as a reference point...

By: Lenny Cacchio

"The Message" is a modern semi-translation, semi-paraphrase of the Bible. I neither endorse it nor condemn it because it is like most Bible versions - a sincere attempt by fallible human beings to present the words of scripture in understandable English.

One passage from "The Message" nails a concept in a way found lacking in most translations. "All praise to the God and Father of our Master, Jesus the Messiah! Father of all mercy! God of all healing counsel! He comes alongside us when we go through hard times, and before you know it, He brings us alongside someone else who is going through hard times so that we can be there for that person just as God was there for us." (II Corinthians 1:3-4, The Message)

The phrases...

By: Lenny Cacchio  

    Try this experiment. Walk into your place of employment with a wad of one-dollar bills and try to give them away. See if people take them. I tried it once. "Anybody want this?" It was hard to find a taker. Someone finally took me up on the offer, but then promptly handed it back. "What’s the catch?" she asked. "Are these real? Why are you doing this?"

    Finally, I put a stack of ones in the kitchen with a sign that read: "Free.Take One." When they figured out that there were no strings attached, they got together and decided to use the money to buy donuts for the office. I don’t even like donuts.

    People tend to be suspicious of freebies. No one goes around giving stuff away and expecting nothing in return....

By: Lenny Cacchio  

Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance. (Jesus, as quoted in Mark 2:17 NKJV)

    All of Jesus disciples were in need of a physician. James and John wrangled constantly over being the greatest in the kingdom, and Peter’s good intentions could not overcome his impetuosity. Matthew’s history as a tax collector implies an uncertain reputation.  Thomas had doubts, and Phillip lacked faith. Some of these men were so reticent that their voices are never heard in the Scriptures.

    All were in need of the healing of the Great Physician, and all save one accepted the offer of that gift. We are left to speculate about the reasons for Judas rejection of eternal life and of Jesus as his Savior, but there is one thing that we do know: Jesus came to heal those who are sick. He came to call sinners, but not the righteous, to repentance.

...

By: Lenny Cacchio  

    Early in the 20th century a gentlemen who was worried about the state of things decided to study the geography of the world, find the safest place, and move there.  In the end he discovered a south sea island and took residence at a little place called Guadalcanal.     I know of Christians today who, worried about the end times, have packed their belongings and are holed up somewhere out West.  Others have attempted to leave the country.  Many others, depending on their theological bent, eagerly await a Place of Safety or a rapture to save themselves from the wrath of the last days.     But the Bible I read tells me that God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power, of love, and of a sound mind (II Timothy 1:7),...

By: Lenny Cacchio

    A few weeks ago I was a victim of a four-car bang-up on the way to work.  The four people involved in this mishap all waited for the presence of a police officer, who courteously and professionally took separate statements from each of us about what had happened.      I haven’t yet seen the police report, but there is one thing I know for certain:  All four of us involved gave different statements, describing different parts of the accident, and each of us told the story differently.  I fully expect that some of the details differ.  I remember one car spinning out in front of me, but now that I think about that split second of chaos, I might have seen her spinning out of control behind me through my rearview mirror.  Regardless,...

By: Allie Dart

    Friendship-making skills are the number one thing churchgoing teenagers are interested in learning.Acquiring these skills ranks higher with these young people than learning more about who God is, and coming to know and love Jesus Christ. It may surprise you to know that it rated even higher than marrying and having a happy family or having a lot of money, according to researcher George Barna. What this shows is how much teenagers long to love and be loved.

    Everyone needs friends. But it’s important to understand that not everyone can be a friend. Some kids are so selfish that no matter how nice you are to them, they may not be the kind of people that you will want to hang-out with. You may have to love this type of person...

By: Lenny Cacchio

“Did I not choose you, the twelve, and one of you is a devil?” (John 6:70 NKJV)     Truthfully, I liked Scott until he got involved in politics. That’s when something about him changed. Maybe the political parties send their people to a special school to learn the craft of political persuasion, or at least they go to party powwows to plot strategy. In any case, words issued forth from Scott’s mouth that sounded suspiciously like the words that issued forth from almost everyone else of his political persuasion. But it was curious to me how his political opponents all seemed to have skeletons in their closets that only a select few seemed to know. His generosity was such that those skeletons were being shared with me.     Several...

By: Lenny Cacchio

    Lately I find myself yelling at the television set. I get angry when I see the stunts pulled by our duly elected officials, and I get angry with the garbage foisted upon us as entertainment, and I get angry at the lack of civility in public discourse.     I know that God gets angry about some things too, but I also know that God doesn’t get angry is the same way that I get angry. I get righteously indignant and want to throw my shoe at the tube. I compare myself to the other side and, like that little guy in the nursery rhyme, I boast, “What a good boy am I!” Somehow, I don’t think God expresses his anger in the same way I do, and certainly his motives are different. A few examples of Jesus’ anger illustrate the point: ...

By: Lenny Cacchio  

    He was wrapped in an enigma, and so he is now. For thousands of years theologians have bandied about how Judas could betray his friend and teacher for the price of a slave. The depth of evil is thankfully unfathomable to most of us, and the why’s and wherefore’s of Judas’ betrayal will be saved for a different discussion.     The question for today is the length to which Jesus went to save Judas from himself. Time and again Jesus both encouraged and warned Judas. Along with the other apostles Judas received power and authority over demons and he cured diseases (Luke 9:1-2). Miracles were performed at his hands! As an example, Jesus washed Judas’ feet in an ordinance of humility and service at the Lord’s Last Supper (John 13:4-5). ...

By: Lenny Cacchio

Things aren’t always as they seem.     General Ulysses S. Grant owned slaves. Robert E. Lee did not. Republican President Richard Nixon established the Environmental Protection Agency and Affirmative Action. A larger percentage Republicans than Democrats – in both houses of Congress -- voted for the Civil Rights Act of 1964.     Even the devil can appear as an angel of light, and it’s evident from the Gospels that the disciples failed to see clearly the light of Jesus until some time after his resurrection.     Two of them approached him about sitting on his right hand and his left in the kingdom, showing among other things how little they grasped what the kingdom is all about. To them such a place seemed like a position...