Ecclesiastes 12:10

    In Mark 6, Jesus goes back to his home town. By this time, his fame was at an all-time high. The crowds were swamping him.   When Jesus spoke in his home synagogue they were “ astonished, saying, "Where did this man get these things, and what is this wisdom given to Him, and such miracles as these performed by His hands?”     Yet, the text tells us they took offense at him. Why?     It was because they knew him. Maybe better said they were used to him.   They had seen him grow up. They knew his brother and sisters. His father had done carpentry work for them. He was too ordinary to be something so special.     Familiarity breeds contempt.   I am always amazed at how things can get overlooked when we get used to them.   A bad paint job, a junky entryway, a stain on the carpet would be balked in a new environment but we get used to it in our own place. We don’t see what we should see because we’ve just got...

   In 2006 the Federal government did something rather unusual, they repealed a tax. This was a 3% federal charge on long-distance phone calls. It was about time. The original purpose of the tax was to help fund American efforts in the Spanish-American War, which ran from April to August of 1898!   The war lasted only four months; the tax lasted more than a century.   Taxes are like that. They last a lot longer than they were supposed to. This one was originally thought to affect only wealthy people since back then they were the only ones that had phones, but it hung around long after that fact changed as well.   Habits are like that as well. We might start a habit with a good reason, yet over time that reason fades away but the behavior stays. For instance, missing the assembly of the church. We might have an illness or a conflict that keeps us away for a time, yet when that hindrance disappears our attendance doesn’t pick back up. Or else, we might...

  Madge Wallace hated Harry Truman.     Well, it was said she didn’t care much for anyone in Independence, Missouri but she seemed to really have it in for Harry. To her, he was just a “ filthy farm boy ”. Early on, she might have a point.   Harry lost his family farm and failed at two different businesses until he finally found his place in politics. But that wasn’t good enough in the eyes of Madge. As a senator, she constantly criticized him, as vice president she scorned him. Even when he was elevated to the Presidency after Roosevelt’s death people close to her said: “ It galls her to see him in the White House running the country ” .   When Truman famously fired MacArthur she ranted: “ Imagine a captain from the National Guard telling off a West Point general ! Why didn’t he let General MacArthur run the Korean War in his own way?” When Truman ran against Governor Thomas Dewey in 1948, Madge stood firmly behind his opponent. “ Why would Harry...

  Lots of men suffer from the things they did in war but for Major Henry Rathbone what drove him to insanity was what he didn’t do.     Rathbone would spend the last 27 years of his life in an asylum for the criminally insane after attacking and killing his wife Clara as she tried to defend their children from his deranged attack. It wasn’t the stress of his job in the U.S. Consul in Hanover, Germany that drove him over the edge, it was the stares. As Clara put it, “ In every hotel we’re in, as soon as people get wind of our presence, we feel ourselves become objects of morbid scrutiny … Whenever we were in the dining room, we began to feel like zoo animals” . Henry imagined the worst when it came to what those people behind the stares were thinking.     What more could he have done that night?     He’d almost died in his effort. No one was expecting the attack. The enemy came in a whisper and had succeeded before anyone knew w...