Ecclesiastes 12:10

    An Ohio judge recently angered state and national defense lawyers after he had a public defender arrested for being unprepared for trial. The Portage County Judge had assistant public defender Brian Jones arrested for contempt of court after Jones refused to begin a misdemeanor assault trial because he said he was unprepared. Jones had only been assigned to the case one day earlier, but the judge still thought it was the defenders job was to be prepared.  I don't know enough about the courtroom to know if he was right, but it made me think about the case that I am supposed to be ready to defend.    In 1 st Peter 3:15, we read, “ but sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts, always being ready to make a defense to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you, yet with gentleness and reverence;”. I may not be a defense attorney but that doesn't mean I don't need to be ready to make a defen...

  I hate negative compliments.   What is a negative compliment? It’s like when a person that tells you “have you lost weight because you don’t look as fat as you used to”. Now it’s said as a compliment but it really isn’t, it is thinly veiled criticism. Now the negative can be thrown right back at you but usually the negative is directed at someone else.  It is not a statement of praise for you as much as it is an attack on someone else.      It’s when the lady walks up to the gospel meeting preacher standing right next to the regular preacher and says, “We haven't heard good preaching like that in years!”.  It’s when a person says “the other deacons don't do half as much as you do”. It's the member that exclaims for all to hear, “That was a great sermon on sin, some people here really needed to hear it!”.  You are not lifted up; you are just the way to tear someone else down. It seems on the surface t...

  In 1867, Russia was desperate to unload its territory in the New World.  They feared that if any conflict with Britain broke out they would lose what now is known as Alaska anyhow, so why not try to sell it? So a deal was struck with U.S. Secretary of State William H. Seward for the purchase of Alaska for $7 million.     Now despite the bargain price of roughly two cents an acre, the Alaskan purchase was ridiculed in Congress and in the press.  Some referred to it as "Seward's folly," and "Seward's icebox".  President Andrew Johnson's called the area a "polar bear garden".  Many questioned the logic of buying a territory with no population to fill it. Why would anyone want to go to Alaska?  What use could it be?  The criticism continued until 1896 when the Klondike gold strike was discovered.  Then Alaska came to be seen generally as a valuable addition to American territory.  Seward's Folly became one of the greatest deal...

  In March 1898, the British started building a railway bridge over the Tsavo River in Kenya. During the next nine months of construction, two maneless male lions stalked the campsite, dragging workers from their tents at night and devouring them. The two man-eating lions were credited with killing 135 people in less than a year before they were eventually killed by the project leader John Patterson.   As the attack intensified, hundreds of workers fled from Tsavo, halting construction on the bridge. Crews initially tried to scare off the lions by building campfires and bomas( thorn fences) around their camp for protection to keep the man-eaters out, but to no avail. The lions leaped over or crawled through the thorn fences. The lions were ruthless, attacking patients in the hospital tents, ambushing water carriers during the day. In his memoirs Patterson wrote: "(The lions') methods became so uncanny, and their man-stalking so well-timed and so certain of success, t...