The story is told of the missionary couple returning to the States after years of overseas service. As fortune would have it, they were sailing on the same ship on which President Teddy Roosevelt was returning. The President had just completed another of his big-game expeditions.

The missionary couple watched as people clamored to see the President and to welcome him home, but there was no such welcome for them. Despondent, the husband said to his wife, “Something is wrong. Why should we have given our lives in faithful service for God in Africa all these many years and have no one care a thing about us? Here this man comes back from a hunting trip, and everybody makes much over him, but nobody gives two hoots about us.”

That night the man grew angrier and said to his wife, “I can’t take this. God is not treating us fairly!”

She replied, “Tell God about it in prayer,” and he did. He went into the bedroom to pray, and a short time later he came out of the bedroom with his spirit obviously lifted.

“Dear, what happened?” she inquired.

He replied, “The Lord settled it with me. I told him how bitter I was that the President should receive this tremendous homecoming when no one met us as we returned home. And when I finished, the Lord simply said, ‘But you are not home yet’!”

When this missionary really gets “home”, he will hear the words, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”

Just remember, you’re not home yet.

Tags: heaven, missionary, Roosevelt, word

Of all the US Presidents, Teddy Roosevelt was one of the toughest – both physically and mentally. But he didn’t start that way. America’s cowboy president was born in Manhattan to a prominent wealthy family. But as a child, he was puny and very sickly. He had debilitating asthma, possessed very poor eyesight, and was painfully thin. His parents weren’t sure he would survive.

When he was twelve, young Roosevelt’s father told him, “You have the mind, but you have not the body, and without the help of the body the mind cannot go as far as it should. You must make the body.” So he worked hard to build that body.

At different times in his life, Roosevelt was a cowboy in the wild west, an explorer and big-game hunter in Africa and Brazil, and a rough-riding Cavalry officer in the Spanish-American War. Years after his presidency, while preparing to deliver a speech in Milwaukee, Roosevelt was shot in the chest by a would-be assassin. With a broken rib and a bullet in his chest, Roosevelt insisted on delivering his one-hour speech before allowing himself to be taken to the hospital.

I’m not sure where Teddy Roosevelt was in his faith, but his life brings to mind Paul’s encouragement in Philippians 4:13: “I do everything through him who gives me strength“.

How has God strengthened you?

Tags: discipline, Roosevelt, strength

Presidential candidates spend months in the limelight striving for attention and support. Presidential candidate wives typically just follow along. But once a candidate gets elected, his shadow becomes “First Lady”. She is then sought after for interviews. And, historically, First Ladies tend to be very wise women indeed.

First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, wife of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, once made this searching statement: “One’s philosophy is not best expressed in words. It is expressed in the choices one makes. In the long run, we shape our lives and we shape ourselves. The process never ends until we die. And the choices we make are ultimately our responsibility.”

Wise King Solomon said it like this: “How much better to get wisdom than gold, to choose understanding rather than silver” (Proverbs 16: 16).

Do you agree with Eleanor? Do you believe it is fair to judge a person’s philosophy of life on the choices he or she makes?

Tags: choices, decision, Roosevelt