Anonymous Encouragers

In early 2010, 16-year old Jennifer Grimes of Jacksonville, Texas, wanted to encourage others in following Christ. “I thought I’d tell you about a project my sister and I have started called Anonymous Encouragers,” said Jennifer. “Basically, it’s an idea to write strangers found in the phone book of your town anonymously (without putting your name or return address). The letters are usually short and always include an encouraging Bible verse. Anyway, we started it a couple of weeks ago and are writing one person each week.”

Jennifer’s achievable goal of one person a week will have her encouraging 52 people each year. She has signed up her sister and enlisted others to write letters. “My prayer is that not only the people that receive the letters be encouraged but even the ones that write them.”

Dwight D. Eisenhower

Dwight D. Eisenhower was born in Texas during 1890. He was brought up in Abilene, Kansas. He was the third of seven sons. His family was extremely poor and they lost their family farm in Kansas before Dwight was a teenager.

Eisenhower fondly remembered those early days and the life lessons learned. He specifically recalled a family night where they were playing cards:

“Now, don’t get me wrong,” said the former president, “it was not with those cards that have kings, queens, jacks, and spades on them. Mother was too strait-laced for that.” President Eisenhower said the game they were playing was called Flinch.

“Anyway, Mother was the dealer, and she dealt me a very bad hand. I began to complain. Mother said, ‘Boys, put down your cards. I want to say something, particularly to Dwight. You are in a game in your home with your mother and brothers who love you. But out in the world you will be dealt bad hands without love. Here is some advice for you boys. Take those bad hands without complaining and play them out. Ask God to help you, and you will win the important game called life.”

The president added, “I’ve tried to follow that wise advice always.”

Pythagoras

Pythagoras was a Greek mathematician and philosopher who lived between 580-520 BC. He founded a school in Croton, which made outstanding contributions to the field of mathematics. He is famous for his study of sound and his theorem relating the lengths of the sides of a right triangle. He intensely studied the world around him and came up with some of the most astute observations about the structure of the universe.

Pythagoras’ philosophy is considered mystical. However, he did emphasize to his students a principle that is applicable to Christians, the principle of self-examination. Though Pythagoras would use his own conscience as his standard for measurement, Christians can look to the Word of God and the Holy Spirit.

These are the questions Pythagoras demanded that his students reflect upon each night to measure their progress that day:

In light of scripture, we can ask,

He Needed Me

A nurse escorted a tired, anxious young man to the bed side of an elderly man. “Your son is here,” she whispered to the patient. She had to repeat the words several times before the patient’s eyes opened. He was heavily sedated because of the pain of his heart attack and he dimly saw the young man standing outside the oxygen tent.

He reached out his hand and the young man tightly wrapped his fingers around it, squeezing a message of encouragement. The nurse brought a chair next to the bedside. All through the night the young man sat holding the old mans hand, and offering gentle words of hope. The dying man said nothing as he held tightly to his son.

As dawn approached, the patient died. The young man placed on the bed the lifeless hand he had been holding, and then he went to notify the nurse.

While the nurse did what was necessary, the young man waited. When she had finished her task, the nurse began to say words of sympathy to the young man.

But he interrupted her. “Who was that man?” He asked.

The startled nurse replied, “I thought he was your father.”

“No, he was not my father,” he answered. “I never saw him before in my life.”

“Then why didn’t you say something when I took you to him?” asked the nurse.

He replied, “I also knew he needed his son, and his son just wasn’t here. When I realized he was too sick to tell whether or not I was his son, I knew how much he needed me…”

I will never leave you

The musical Side Show is about Violet and Daisy, conjoined twins from a freak show. In the course of the musical, they are lured away from the circus with promises of fame on vaudeville.

By the end of the show, however, the twins have become disillusioned with a life of fame, and their dreams of love and happiness seem to be lost. Just when Violet is ready to give up, Daisy reminds her of something the two have forgotten in the middle of their adventures.

“I will never leave you,” she sings to her sister. “I will never go away.” Despite the irony in the words — after all, they are conjoined twins! — the song is touching. It is a song of friendship more than just a song of fact. Daisy and Violet share a body, but they also share a love and devotion to each other that would keep them together even if their bodies could be separated.

Beautiful Forgiveness

How beautiful and yet how rare is forgiveness!

Christ taught His disciples to forgive their enemies, and in this respect as in all others, He is our great example. He said amid the agonies of the crucifixion, “Father forgive them.”

A deaf mute being asked, “What is forgiveness?” took a pencil and wrote, “It is the odour which a flower yields when trampled upon”.

Sir William Jones has given us the following extract from the Persian poet Sadi:

God’s Help

In 1997, 32 year old the Reverend Scott Schmieding was diagnosed with cancer of the tongue. During an 11-hour operation at the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, doctors removed his tongue through his throat. Then, they reconstructed the cavity in his mouth with a muscle from his abdomen.

During his rehabilitation, he suffered from blisters in his mouth from intense radiation, making his speech therapy sessions agony. He calls it “the most painful part of the entire ordeal.”

For eight months, he had to breathe through a hole in his neck, and he ate through a feeding tube. Doctors told Schmieding they feared he would choke to death if he tried to swallow food, and that the feeding tube might be permanent.

The loss of his tongue meant Schmieding permanently lost almost all of his sense of taste. Radiation treatments to his head eliminated the ability to produce saliva. He had to learn how to replace the sounds of consonants in his speech ó making the “T” sound, for instance, by shooting air at his retainer, which acts like a megaphone and replicates the traditional sound of the tip of the tongue touching the roof of the mouth.

But through the years, Scott’s speech improved and he returned to the pulpit full time. Few notice anything different about his speech. Scott believes strongly that he’s been able to reach more people without a tongue than he would have had he not had cancer.

“The history of the Bible is the story of God using imperfect people for his perfect purposes,” he said. “I’m just one in a very long line of imperfect people being used by God.”

Mother Teresa

Mother Teresa is Albanian by birth; her original name is Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu. In 1948, she became a citizen of India. She received her spiritual training in Dublin, Ireland and Darjeeling, India and she became a nun in 1937.

On September 10, 1946, after teaching for twenty years at a high school in Calcutta, India, Mother Teresa received another call from God to serve the poorest of the poor who lived in the streets.

Archbishop of Calcutta Henry D’Souza knows that at times in her life, she felt abandoned by God.

He said that in one letter, she wrote that she had been walking the streets of Calcutta searching for a house where she could start her work. At the end of the day, she wrote in her diary, “I wandered the streets the whole day. My feet are aching, and I have not been able to find a home. And I also get the Tempter telling me, ‘Leave all this, go back to the convent from which you came.’”

She did find a home and the rest is history. The Missionaries of Charity feeds 500,000 families a year in Calcutta alone, treats 90,000 leprosy patients annually, and educates 20,000 children every year.

Seaside Wisdom

One Father of the Church, Saint Augustine, studied the mystery of the Holy Trinity and although he was at his wits’ end, he still could not comprehend it. One day he was walking on the sandy beach by the ocean. There churned in his mind the mystery of the Holy Trinity. He was talking to himself: “One God, but three Persons. Three Persons — not three Gods but one God. What does it mean? How can it be explained? How can my mind take it in?” And so he was torturing his mind and beating his brains out, when he saw a little boy on the beach. He approached him to see what he was doing.

The child had dug a small hole in the sand. With his little hands he was carrying water from the ocean and was dumping it in the little hole. Saint Augustine asked, “What are you doing, my child?”

The child replied, “I want to put all of the water of the ocean into this hole.”

Once more Saint Augustine asked, “But is it possible for all of the water of this great ocean to be contained in this little hole?”

And the child asked him in return, “If the water of the ocean cannot be contained in this little hole, then how can the Infinite Trinitarian God be contained in your mind?”

The Gideons International

In the autumn of the year 1898, John H. Nicholson of Janesville, Wisconsin, came to the Central Hotel at Boscobel, Wisconsin, for the night. The hotel was crowded, it was suggested that he take a bed in a double room with Samuel E. Hill of Beloit, Wisconsin. The two men soon discovered that both were Christians, and that John Nicholson, as a 12-year-old boy, had promised his dying mother that he would read God’s Word and pray daily. It had been his custom for many years to read the Bible before retiring for the night. They had their evening devotions together and on their knees before God the thoughts were given that later developed into an association.

On May 31, 1899, Nicholson and Hill met at Beaver Dam, Wisconsin, concluded to band Christian commercial travelers together for mutual recognition, personal evangelism, and united service for the Lord. They decided to call a meeting in Janesville, Wisconsin, on July 1, 1899, in the YMCA.

Only three men showed up at that meeting: Nicholson, Hill, and Will J. Knights. But from that humble beginning, The Gideons International was created. Today, there are over 140,000 members, located in 175 countries. Annually, members of The Gideons distribute 56 million copies of the scriptures.