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Standard, Standards
The Barometer Was Right
The following story is told by E. Schuyler English: “A man who lived on Long Island was able one day to satisfy a lifelong ambition by purchasing for himself a very fine barometer. When the instrument arrived at his home, he as extremely disappointed to find that the indicating needle appeared to be stuck, pointing to the sector marked ‘HURRICANE.’ After shaking the barometer very vigorously several times, its new owner sat down and wrote a scorching letter to the store from which he had purchased the instrument. The following morning on the way to his office in New York, he mailed the letter. That evening he returned to Long Island to find not only the barometer missing, but his house also. The barometer’s needle had been right—there was a hurricane!” -P.R.V.
Our Daily Bread, April 28
Resource
- You know what Mason said to Dixon, “You’ve got to draw the line somewhere.” - Our Saviour, God, J. M. Boice, p. 40
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Hunting
When you’re raised in the country, hunting is just a natural part of growing up. For years I enjoyed packing up my guns and some food to head off into the woods. Even more than the hunting itself, I enjoyed the way these trips always seemed to deepen my relationship with friends as we hunted during the day and talked late into the night around the campfire. When an old friend recently invited me to relive some of those days, I couldn’t pass up the chance. For several weeks before the trip, I had taken the time to upgrade some of my equipment and sight in my rifle. When the day came, I was ready for the hunt. What I wasn’t ready for was what my close friend, Tom, shared with me the first night out on the trail.
I always enjoyed the time I spent with Tom. He had become a leader in his church and his warm and friendly manner had also taken him many steps along the path of business success. He had a lovely wife, and while I knew they had driven over some rocky roads in their marriage, things now seemed to be stable and growing. Tom’s kids, two daughters and a son, were struggling in junior high and high school with the normal problems of peer pressure and acceptance. As we rode back into the mountains, I could tell that something big was eating away at Tom’s heart. His normal effervescent style was shrouded by an overwhelming inner hurt. Normally, Tom would attack problems with the same determination that had made him a success in business. Now, I saw him wrestling with something that seemed to have knocked him to the mat for the count. Silence has a way of speaking for itself. All day and on into the evening, Tom let his lack of words shout out his inner restlessness. Finally, around the first night’s campfire, he opened up.
The scenario Tom painted was annoyingly familiar. I’d heard it many times before in many other people’s lives. But the details seemed such a contract to the life that Tom and his wife lived and the beliefs they embraced. His oldest daughter had become attached to a boy at school. Shortly after they started going together, they became sexually involved. Within two months, she was pregnant. Tom’s wife discovered the truth when a packet from Planned Parenthood came in the mail addressed to her daughter. When confronted with it, the girl admitted she had requested it when she went to the clinic to find out if she was pregnant. If we totaled up the number of girls who have gotten pregnant out of wedlock during the past two hundred years of our nation’s history, the total would be in the millions. Countless parents through the years have faced the devastating news. Being a member of such a large fraternity of history, however, does not soften the severity of the blow to your heart when you discover it’s your daughter.
Tom shared the humiliation he experienced when he realized that all of his teaching and example had been ignored. Years of spiritual training had been thrust aside. His stomach churned as he relived the emotional agony of knowing that the little girl he and his wife loved so much had made a choice that had permanently scarred her heart.
I’m frequently confronted with these problems in my ministry and have found that dwelling on the promiscuous act only makes matters worse. I worship a God of forgiveness and solutions, and at that moment in our conversation I was anxious to turn toward hope and healing.
I asked Tom what they had decided to do. Would they keep the baby, or put it up for adoption? That’s when he delivered the blow. With the fire burning low, Tom paused for a long time before answering. And even when he spoke he wouldn’t look me in the eye.
“We considered the alternatives, Tim. Weighed all the options.” He took a deep breath. “We finally made an appointment with the abortion clinic. I took her down there myself.”
I dropped the stick I’d been poking the coals with and stared at Tom. Except for the wind in the trees and the snapping of our fire it was quiet for a long time. I couldn’t believe this was the same man who for years had been so outspoken against abortion. He and his wife had even volunteered at a crisis pregnancy center in his city.
Heartsick, I pressed him about the decision. Tom then made a statement that captured the essence of his problem...and the problem many others have in entering into genuine rest. In a mechanical voice, he said “I know what I believe, Tim, but that’s different than what I had to do. I had to make a decision that had the least amount of consequences for the people involved.”
Just by the way he said it, I could tell my friend had rehearsed these lines over and over in his mind. And by the look in his eyes and the emptiness in his voice, I could tell his words sounded as hollow to him as they did to me.
Little House on the Freeway, Tim Kimball, pp. 67-70
Ted Koppel Said…
Said ABC Nightline’s Ted Koppel one night: “We have actually convinced ourselves that slogans will save us. ‘Shoot up if you must, but use a clean needle.’ r, ‘Enjoy sex whenever and with whomever you wish, but protect yourself. “No! The answer is no! Not because it isn’t cool or smart or because you might wind up in jail or dying in the AIDS ward, but because it’s wrong! “What Moses brought down from Mount Sinai were not the Ten Suggestions, but the Ten Commandments!”
Bits & Pieces, April 30, 1992
Last Man in Blows the Whistle
A factory manager found that production was being hampered by the tardiness of his people returning from the lunch hour. When the whistle blew few were at their machines. He posted a sign by the suggestion box offering a cash award for the best answer to this question: “What should we do to ensure that every man will be inside the factory when the whistle blows? “Many suggestions were submitted, and the one that was selected solved the problem. But he manager, a man with a sense of humor, liked this one best, though he could not use it: “Let the last man in blow the whistle.”
Source unknown
What You’d Get if 99% Were Good Enough
- No phone service for 15 minutes each day.
- 1.7 million pieces of first class mail lost each day.
- 35,000 newborn babies dropped by doctors or nurses each year
- 200,000 people getting the wrong drug prescriptions each year
- Unsafe drinking water three days a year.
- Three misspelled words on the average page of type.
- 2 million people would die from food poisoning each year.
Source unknown
I Set My Clock By Your Whistle
Every day a man used to walk by a jewelry store, stop and set his watch by the big clock in the window. One day the jeweler happened to be standing in his doorway. He greeted the man in a friendly way and said; “I see you set your watch by my clock. What kind of work do you do that demands such correct time each day?” “I’m the watchman at the plant down the street,” said the man. “My job is to blow the five o’clock whistle.” The jeweler was startled. “But...you can’t do that,” he blurted out. “I set my clock by your whistle!”
Source unknown
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