Devotionals

A key aspect of parenting is teaching the value of delayed gratification.  Instead of buying fully grown flowers, together you can plant seeds.  Instead of a box mix, together you can make a cake from scratch.  Instead of a credit card with a spending limit, you can provide real currency and discuss together the principles of giving, saving and responsible spending. The benefits of [...]

Sir Francis Bacon is credited with coining the phrase “knowledge is power,” intending to highlight the importance of education for personal advancement.  He understood that with greater knowledge comes increased control over a situation.  Unfortunately, it can also be used negatively. I once worked for a police chief who began every budget meeting with an in-depth examination of the overtime expenditures of each section [...]

Last week I watched my favorite NFL team lose a game in the closing seconds by a single point.  Sports analysts described the loss as the worst in team history due to a series of bizarre blunders.  The most egregious of them took place when one of the players broke through the defense for a 72-yard run to score a touchdown—except it didn’t count.  [...]

“Answer shopping” is a tactic that compares potential solutions from different sources to identify the one most favorable.  Without any instruction, little ones figure it out.  When a toddler bumps his head, he waddles right past dad to get to mom because he prefers her response.  Teenagers figure out that a request involving a greater risk of injury is probably better suited to dad.  [...]

One of the most enjoyable parts of being on a remote vacation is the absence of regular schedules and everyday responsibilities—no alarm, no traffic and no boss.  The freedom to spend your time any way you like can be a source of genuine refreshment.  It’s the retirement life that people chase their entire professional lives.  As delightful as that kind of autonomy sounds, it’s [...]

A humorous way to point out someone’s failure to complete a straightforward task is to say, “You only had one job.”  One example is the company that mistakenly hung the sign for “WOW Productions” upside down so that the colorful, oversized letters across the roofline read “MOM.” Another example involves the Sean O’Casey Bridge in Dublin, Ireland.  It’s a pedestrian “swing bridge” designed to [...]