Ecclesiastes 12:10

      I’ve done it to many times to count. I will go to a restaurant and be unimpressed with the food, the service, the cost, or any host of things. Then I’ll declare quite sincerely that “I won’t be going back”. Now fast forward a few months and we be out, and the choices are limited, and I want something different, so guess where we will end up?     It doesn’t just happen there. We often find ourselves in situations we don’t want to be in and when we finally escape, we swear we won’t be back. Until we are.       Satan knows and uses this tendency in his temptations. I might get burned with a bad meal if I fall for it at a restaurant but I could lose my soul if I don’t see Satan’s trap.     We go back because we forget why we left in the first place. We go back because we slip into old patterns. We go back because we don’t make a clean committed break. We go back because we don’t replace bad with good leaving a void. We go b...

  Q WERTY     You might recognize the non-word from your keyboard. It has come to be the name of the standard layout of most letter input devices. Once upon a time, it was the standard for typewriters and so it also found its way onto the personal computer. Now even your smartphone text layout is the same.   Ever wonder why?     It not because it is the best way to type. In fact, it is the worse way! The inventor of the layout Christopher Sholes consulted an educator to find out the most common letter pairs in the English language and then spilt them as far apart on the keyboard. This was to slow down the typist. The layout prevented jams in the typewriter so the machine could operate at a consistent speed, not a faster one.     Now we don’t have to worry about jams but the layout hasn’t changed. There have been better layouts built and proven to be faster and more efficient yet we can’t seem to make the change over from what has always be...

     I’m sure you have heard of the Pony Express. It is the stuff of American myth and legend. The Pony Express was a series of eighty riders and five hundred horses galloping thousands of miles across the Western plains. Riders battled Indians, bandits, and natural hazards to deliver letters from Missouri to California in just ten days.   The stuff of legends.   In reality, however, it was a total failure. The Pony Express went bankrupt in a little more than a year and cost it’s investors a quarter of million dollars. It was dangerous, even deadly, to both riders and horses.   The service was forced to use child labor as riders had to weigh less than 125 lbs.   To send a message was expensive, a half-ounce letter cost $5 to mail (about $90 in today’s money). The worst part was it was outdated before it even started. When the transcontinental telegraph was completed the Pony Express was gone in two months.   Yet it became an American legend....

     I guess I never realized how good we had it.   With all the shutdowns caused by the recent pandemic, I’ve experienced more and more lately the need for help and not finding any available. Whether it’s the customer support on the phone or the store I need a particular item closing earlier, a lot of places have cut back hours and staff keeping them from being able to provide the services they once did. What you expected to be open and ready to assist is shut down and closed up. I have felt a lot of frustration when you need someone to answer but no one is at home.   That’s what is great about God, He never ‘not available’. My help comes from the LORD, Who made heaven and earth. He will not allow your foot to slip; He who keeps you will not slumber.   Behold, He who keeps Israel Will neither slumber nor sleep. Psalms 121:2-4      God is never called away. He is never on vacation or taking a break. He isn’t asleep or distracted....

      Walter Hunt was great at making things. He just wasn’t good at doing something with what he made.   In 1834, he inventing the first sewing machine but never filed a patent on it. Someone else did and made a fortune. He didn’t make that mistake again with the first fountain pen and first repeating rifle. However, he never turned them into viable products. Others did and made amazing profits. In 1849, after a few hours playing with a piece of wire be bent it into the shape that would become the safety pin. That idea would go on to be a million-dollar one. Just not for him. He sold the patent for $100, to make some quick cash.   Such great ideas but he never capitalized on them.     James warns his readers about this kind of behavior. Those that hear the word but don’t act on it. Those that have faith but don’t have works. Those that have God’s commands but don’t do the very thing those commands say. It’s not enough to just know the right thin...