No living creature, except for a man, is able to take a risk, and even the risk of death, for the sake of
truth. Thousands of martyrs who have lived are a unique phenomenon in the history of our solar system.
~ Aleksandr Menn
Sharp persecution breaks off only the tips of the branches. It produces martyrs and the tree still grows. Never-ending social and political repression, on the other hand, starves the roots; it stifles evangelism and the church declines.
~ Samuel Moffett, in A History of Christianity in Asia
If the Tiber reaches the walls, if the Nile does not rise to the fields, if the sky does not move, or the earth does, if there is famine, if there is plague, the cry is at once, “The Christians to the lions.”
~ Tertullian
He that dies a martyr proves that he was not a knave, but by no means that he was not a fool.
~ Charles Caleb Colton
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Of all the gifts of the gods to the human race, philosophy is the richest, the most beautiful, the most exalted.
~ in De Legibus
Philosophy is the best medicine for the mind.
History, the evidence of time, the light of truth, the life of memory, the directress of life, the herald of antiquity, committed to immortality.
~ in De Oratore Read more
This evening my wife shared with me the story of a mother who lost her child in the tsunami brought about by the earthquake near Samoa. The mother had gone to pick up her 8-year-old daughter from school following the earthquake. As they returned home they were caught in the tidal wave. Despite the mother’s best effort to hold on to her daughter, she slipped from her grasp and was swept away as she cried out in panic for her mother to help her. They found the body of the little girl several hours later still wearing her school backpack.
My heart breaks and tears come as I think about the pain of losing a child. My impulse is to fall in line with Theoden from The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers when he says after losing his son, “No parent should have to bury their child.”
Nevertheless, they do. So perhaps a better way to think of it comes to us from the account of Rabbi Meir and his wife;
While Rabbi Meir was holding his weekly discourse on Sabbath afternoon, his two beloved sons died suddenly at home. Their mother covered them with a sheet, and forbore to mourn on the sacred day. When Rabbi Meir returned after the evening Services, he asked for his sons, whom he had not seen in the synagogue. She asked him to recite the Habdalah and gave him his evening meal. Then she said: “I have a question to ask thee. A friend once gave me jewels to keep for him; now he wishes them again. Shall I return them?”
“Beyond doubt thou must,” said Rabbi Meir.
His wife took him by the hand, led him to the bed and drew back the sheet. Rabbi Meir burst into bitter weeping, and his wife said: “They were entrusted to us for a time; now their Master has taken back His very own.”
(Midrash Mishle, 28)
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- Mourning, by A.W. Pink
When my mother passed away a couple of months ago, people expressed their love and sympathy in a variety of ways. The following is a poem written by a family friend Utah Humphrey.
Verna Stilley
10-21-08
The road God gave you was a very steep climb,
But you bravely went forward day by day.
Clyde was the hero ministering to you
Being there to help you in the part he would play.
Now the long journey has come to an end
And on Earth you won’t suffer any more.
In Heave you are finally free at last
With this freedom you finally can soar.
I remember the years you became my friend
With lots of laughter I still can behold.
The tears I shed now will soon be gone
As I ponder your life as I saw it unfold.
Poor Clyde was often the key to your stories
And his face would turn red as he grinned.
In the room you would have everyone laughing
And through the years you did it again and again.
Leach and Cardin one entered a contest
And when it was over Leach had won.
We met at the camp grounds at GLBA
To fellowship and have lots of fun..
You were the pitcher when we played softball
And I don’t remember who won or who lost.
Both churches had added people to Sunday School
Without either group adding up th ecost.
The years seemed to pass by much too quickly
And retirement years had finally come about.
The price you paid in the last several years
Didn’t carry a lot of laughter or clout.
Please enjoy Heaven and the freedom you have.
We will all be joining you in just a little while.
I wished we could look into Heaven and see you now
With a life filled with laughter and a beautiful smile.
By faith we must keep walking onward toward Heaven
Knowing life down here for us is not through …
Sometimes we will pause during our journey
And when we do we’ll be thinking of you.
Good bye precious friend for just a while longer
And enjoy your new life absolutely free from pain.
We will see you tomorrow on Heaven’s bright shore
Where there’ll be plenty of sunshine without rain.
A friend in Christ,
Utah Humphrey
I hope to buy stock in this company before they start making their product available to NASCAR fans.
PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Baseball fanatics won’t have to leave behind their beloved teams when they finally go to that big stadium in the sky. Instead, they’ll soon be able to rest in peace inside a coffin with team colors and insignia.
Major League Baseball has a marketing deal with a company called Eternal Image. It’ll put team logos on caskets and urns. The effort begins next season with the Yankees, Red Sox, Tigers, Phillies, Cubs and Dodgers. It could eventually include all 30 teams.
Each urn will be stamped with a message saying Major League Baseball officially recognizes the deceased as a lifelong fan of that team.
After starting with baseball, Eternal Image hopes to branch out by making similar deals with the NFL, the NHL and NASCAR. MORE
I was away last week for my mother’s funeral so my work email has stacked up a bit. While sorting through my email and trying to clean out some old stuff I came across the following story which someone had sent to me some time ago. It made me think of the beautiful passage of comfort found in John 14 so I share it with you here.
~DEATH~
A sick man turned to his doctor as he was preparing to
Leave the examination room and said,
‘Doctor, I am afraid to die.
Tell me what lies on the other side.’
Very quietly, the doctor said, ‘I don’t know.’
‘You don’t know? You, a Christian man,
Do not know what is on the other side?’
The doctor was holding the handle of the door;
On the other side came a sound of scratching and whining,
And as he opened the door, a dog sprang into the room
And leaped on him with an eager show of gladness.
Turning to the patient, the doctor said,
‘Did you notice my dog?
He’s never been in this room before.
He didn’t know what was inside.
He knew nothing except that his master was here,
And when the door opened, he sprang in without fear.
I know little of what is on the other side of death,
But I do know one thing…
I know my Master is there and that is enough.’
Do you believe in reincarnation? Why or why not?
Share your answers in the comments below.
Randy Pausch, a Carnegie Mellon University computer scientist whose “last lecture” about facing terminal cancer became an Internet sensation and a best-selling book, died Friday. He was 47.
C.S. Lewis, John F. Kennedy, and Aldous Huxley all died within just a few hours of each other. Peter Kreeft explores their worldviews through an imaginary conversation held “on the other side.” Well worth the read!
It is said that when Truman Capote died Gore Vidal commented, “Good career move.”
Maybe that is a bit crassly stated, but frequently the death of an author will result in a tremendous upsurge in book sales. Not only that, but sometimes posthumous works multiply. Consider the list of posthumous books by Ernest Hemingway (source: Casanova Was A Book Lover
A Moveable Feast (1964)
The Fifth Column and Four Unpublished Stories of the Spanish Civil War (1969)
Island in the Stream (1970)
The Nick Adams Stories (1972)
Along With Youth: Hemingway, the Early Years (1985)
The Dangerous Summer (1985)
Ernest Hemingway: Dateline Toronto (1985)
The Garden of Eden ( 1986)
The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway: The Finca Vigia Edition (1987)
Hemingway: The Toronto Years (1994)
The Good Lion (1998)
At the Hemingways: with Fifty Years of Correspondence between Ernest and Marcelline Hemingway (1999)
True at First Light (1999)
[A few of the above are either biographies or collections that contain previously unpublished materials.]
Wow, Ernest Hemingway published more after he was dead than most of us will during our lifetime.
