Young Jonathan, who had been promised a new puppy for his tenth birthday, had a tough time choosing between a dozen likely candidates at the neighborhood pet shop. Finally he decided upon one nondescript shaggy pup who was wagging his tail furiously. Explained Jonathan, “I want the one with the happy ending.”

Everyone loves a story with a happy ending. Anita and I prefer to watch older movies on TCM because they tend to have a happy ending. I have invested my life in other people because I love seeing happy endings in their lives. Trouble tends to rob our happiness, but standing firm in the faith through those trials brings about the happy ending we desire.

Today is a day when you can help bring about a happy ending in someone else’s life. Speak words of hope to them no matter what they throw back. Show God’s compassion like “Chris” did to the bag lady in our skit last weekend. Don’t take an offense but be a friend to the friendless.

Tags: adoption, Caring, encouragement, resurrection

When I was a new convert in the early 1970s, Anita and I were part of a youth coffeehouse ministry in Fort Wayne called the Adam’s Apple. This ministry reached literally thousands of young people in that turbulent time through the ministry of the Director, John Lloyd.

One evening after the concert and preaching, John Lloyd approached me and asked if I had considered attending CTC, a 2-year Junior Bible College just starting up. I replied that I had thought about it. He responded, “A guy like you should consider going. Its going to be great.”

His encouragement got me thinking, and I did enroll in that very first class of CTC. That was the beginning of where we are today. Because a man pushed a little in encouraging me to go beyond my comfort zone, I entered the ministry. I value the ministry of Rev. John Lloyd and have tried to encourage others down the same road. He’ll be speaking to us this weekend and I hope he speaks an encouraging word into your life.

Tags: encouragement, John Lloyd

I’ve never been very athletic. I did play Little League baseball as a kid and played a little friendly baseball after my service experience, but I was never in demand on anybody’s team. And I wasn’t much of a coach for my boys’ athletic pursuits.

Our daughter, Jenny, was a cheerleader and we tried to be at all her games. It was amazing how critical parents and observers were toward their sons trying their best in basketball and football. “Come on, Michael, wake up! What’s the matter with you?”

What an encouragement it was when our son, Nathan, decided to go out for cross country. We attended most of his track meets, but he arose to the occasion with those long distance runs. He, wired like his Dad, learned how to take it easy and pace himself. I would maneuver to key places along the run to cheer him on. He never knew where I’d be, but always knew I was there.

In those years of attending cross country races, I never heard a discouraging word. Even last-place runners get cheers, not jeers. “Go, Nathan, You can do it!” Cross Country just might be the most positive sport out there.

“Pleasant words are…sweetness to the soul and health to the bones” (Proverbs 16:24).

The Christian life is a long-distance run. Its not who starts the race, but who finishes. As fellow believers discipline themselves to run the race, they need encouragement. They need “pleasant words” that bring “sweetness to the soul”.

What are some pleasant words you have received lately?

Tags: cross country, encouragement, sports, words

I watched them tearing a building down…
A gang of men in a busy town,
With ho-heave and lusty yell.
They swung a beam and a side wall fell;
I asked the foreman, “Are these men skilled
And the men you’d hire if you had to build?”
He gave a laugh and said, “No, indeed!
Just common labor is all I need;
I can easily wreck in a day or two
What builders have taken a year to do!”
And I thought to myself as I went away
“Which of these roles have I tried to play?”
Am I a Builder who works with care,
Measuring life by the rule and square?
Am I shaping my deed to well made plan,
Patiently doing the best I can?
Or am I a Wrecker, who walks the town,
Content with the labor of tearing it down?
-Mr. Anonymous

Tags: builder, demolition, encouragement, wrecker

John P. DiMarzio observed the following lesson: “During my early farming days I decided to invest my holdings in poultry. So I started with one hundred cheap chicks ($6.00). Periodically I noticed that one of the chicks would get an open sore. As time went by the sore grew larger, and eventually the chick died from the wound.

Trying to find the cause, I watched the chickens more closely; the outcome was quite revealing. When one chick would get a small scratch, another would peck at it. Then the others would follow suit, and before long it seemed that all the chickens were pecking the one chick’s sore. Each time the victim was pecked the sore grew, and more chickens pecked it. Finally, the innocent chicken, who really needed protection from his peers, died.

Now which chicken was the real assassin? Was it the one who made the first peck at the open wound? Or was it the one who made peck #99 or peck #100? Possibly it was the one that made the final peck before the chick’s demise. In any case, the chick died.

By and by more chickens died of pecking. When winter came, there weren’t enough chickens to huddle together and protect each other. They all died. Those cruel cannibalistic chickens! They didn’t realize as they killed each other that they doomed themselves; in a sense they had signed their own death warrants.

The other day I noticed a brother’s flaw; so I pecked at it. I told others, and they followed suit. As the flaw grew in size through our pecking, many others joined in. Instead of giving our brother a band-aid to cover the wound, we exposed it for the world to see. My brother died.

Who was the assassin? By and by there was more pecking, and more brothers died. Eventually I got cold and needed my brothers’ comfort. They were gone; I died.

Oh, those cruel cannibalistic chickens!”

But if you bite and devour one another, beware lest you be consumed by one another! (Galatians 5:15).

Tags: chicken, criticism, encouragement

“Far too noisy, my dear Mozart. Far too many notes” (The Emperor Ferdinand after the first performance of The Marriage of Figaro).

“If Beethoven’s Seventh Symphany is not by some means abridged, it will soon fall into disuse” (Philip Hale, Boston music critic, 1837).

“Rembrandt is not be be compared in the painting of character with our extraordinarily gifted English artist Mr. Rippingille” (John Hunt (1775-1848)).

“Flight by machines heavier than air is unpractical and insignificant…utterlyimpossible” (Simon Newcomb (1835-1909)).

“We don’t like their sound. Groups of guitars are on their way out” (Decca Recording Company when turning down the Beatles in 1962).

“You will never amount to very much” (A Munich schoolmaster to Albert Einstein, aged 10).

And on and on it goes. The only thing we can be thankful for when it comes to blowing it is that nobody keeps a record of ours. Or do they? Or do we with others?

Tags: encouragement, failure