Sometimes life can be messy, so let's have a cup of coffee and talk about...

I went to a watch repair store yesterday. I wanted to check out two old watches I have that stopped working. One of them was a Cartier that belonged to my mother, and I had never worn it.                 As I am standing there, I see the repairman looking at it and looking at it, back and forth, with his loupe on his eye. As he explained to me the prices for changing the battery, etc., he asked the one question I was expecting: “Is it real?” I knew it wasn’t—my mother could never afford the real thing--, but I played along and said, “I don’t know, I inherited it from my mother.” It was curious to me that he would not have known it right away. As he continued looking at the watch from all sides, he said. “It is really hard to tell; you should be able to by looking at the name in the back, but it is almost illegible because of the scratches and the gunk around the letters.” He was referring to the old dust partic...

 "that now, through the church, the manifold wisdom of God should be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms..." -Ephesians 3:10 As I was reading this devotional by Ray Stedman, whom I just learned had been a mentor to both Chuck Swindoll and Luis Palau, a couple of things were brought to mind. First, I found out that the word translated manifold, as used in this text, means literally, the "many-colored wisdom of God". Thus he goes on the describing how God is with us in all the different colors of our life--blue: sadness; golden: glory days; red: anger; and so on. That in itself was a beautiful portrayal of how God is God in everything, weather I like it or not, weather I think they are good or not, whether I understand it or not.      So, what really surprised me and left me perplexed and dumbfounded, and it was like a revelation from God, is how His love for mankind is such, that the angels and demons can't understand it, so God has to...