From Isaiah 3:8: “For Jerusalem has stumbledand Judah has fallen, because their speech and their deeds are against the Lord,defying His glorious presence.”
From Isaiah 7:13-14: “Then Isaiah said: “Hear then, O house of David! Is it too little for you to weary mortals, that you weary my God also? Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign. Look, the young woman is with child and shall bear a son, and shall name Him Immanuel.'”
The outstanding characteristic of a Christian is this unveiled frankness before God so that the life becomes a mirror for other lives.
From 2 Corinthians 3:18: “And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit.”
Living in a small mountain village, Earl remained a mystery to most of the local folks. The crotchety and ill-tempered man stayed away from all but a couple of acquaintances.
Earl’s rundown shack sat at the very edge of town. Seeing that others viewed him as an outsider, the home’s remote location suited him just fine.
Earl’s mean streak blazed away every night. On his front porch, the self-proclaimed hermit played a never-ending recording of a haunting sound. A wolf’s howling kept others away . . . critters, trespassers, and just about anything else.
Staying up well past midnight, Earl enjoyed his isolation. No one dared to drop in because of the eerie, crying sound.
At bedtime, Earl turned off the repetitive recording. After all, he looked forward to his own peaceful night of sleep.
On this cold and snowy winter night, nature would even up the score at the expense of this mean-spirited man.
In the middle of a full-moon nightscape at exactly three o’clock, a cagey wolf slipped into the quiet town. His hunger brought him right up to Earl’s front porch. Perhaps he smelled a remnant of supper’s beef stew.
With the moon glowing overhead, surrounded by the blackened sky, the forlorn wolf let out a riveting, howling cry.
Earl stirred awake upon hearing the piercing, deafening sound from right below his upstairs bedroom window. Realizing the sound was from a hungry wolf, sent shudders throughout Earl’s now-frozen body.
His teeth would have chattered, except his false teeth were sitting by the bathroom sink. Unable to scream, Earl buried himself under the bed’s heavy blankets. Even then, his body was shivering from the coldness of the wolf’s constant howling.
Awake for a few more hours, Earl never could return to sleep. Shaking with fear, the old fella had finally met his match. Just before sunrise, the wolf scampered away, unseen by anyone.
Wide awake, exhausted, and overcome with terror, Earl wondered what the next night could bring.
This informative post will be posted on Saturday along with my usual writing. We can all appreciate some of the lesser known facts from around the world.
Tomatoes are a member of the nightshade family, of which the majority is poisonous. So, for almost two hundred years after they were brought back from Mexico, Europeans were afraid to eat tomatoes. Instead, they used the plant as houseplants.
Cappuccino is named for the similarity of its color to the color of the long, hooded robes worn by the monks of the Capuchin order–and the fact that a properly prepared cappuccino leaves a brown ring along the rim of the cup that resembles a monk’s cowl.
These facts have been discovered in I NEVER KNEW THAT by David Hoffman (2009).
Faith never knows where it is being led, but it loves and knows the One who is leadiing.
From Hebrews 11:8: “By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to set out for a place that he was to receive as an inheritance; and he set out, not knowing where he was going.”
Big Sky Buckeye 