Guidelines For Living Devotional

When you greet someone do you say, "Howdy!" "Hello," or just "Hi there"?  It may depend on your age or your culture, or the person to whom you are speaking; yet greetings and farewells are all-important. 

"Lord, make me an instrument of Thy peace..." prayed St. Francis of Assisi long ago.  How better to begin a day than by saying, "Lord, make me an instrument of peace today.""

Wise is the person who thinks ahead and plans for the future, right?  But at what point does planning become presumption?  Suppose you are a businessperson, and business has been brisk. Your warehouses are overflowing.  Would it not make sense to enlarge? 

You think you have problems?  I suspect you would not trade your challenges for those confronting the Apostle Paul.  Of the 13 books that he wrote, none is more intimate or personal that his second letter to the Corinthians.  In this he wrote, "We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed" (2 Corinthians 4:8-9).  What Paul faced would have sent the average person either into deep depression or flight, but Paul not only took it in stride, he actually seemed to grow with it.

The headmaster of New College in Edinburgh, Scotland used to ask the blessing at the noon meal by praying, "O Thou who has endowed us with so many gifts, now grant to us just one more--a grateful heart." 

When he was asked who was the most influential person in his life, George Bush, who followed in his father's footsteps as President of the United States, quickly responded, "Jesus Christ!" 

A Japanese businessman was invited by his American host to attend church with him, and he quickly agreed. 

Of the thirteen letters that came from the pen of the theologian of the New Testament, Paul, formerly known as Saul of Tarsus, none is more personal and intimate than the letter in our Bibles known as 2 Corinthians.

The Naval Institute's magazine carried the story of a battleship captain who was concerned about rough seas and fog when, quite suddenly, a bright light appeared on the horizon. 

Watching the bears at the zoo is a favorite pastime in Bern, Switzerland.  John Phillips tells how that at one time there were two pits of brown bears with a male and female in each den.