The Wisdom Chronicle

The Wisdom Chronicle is designed to bring nuggets of wisdom from the dozens of books I read every year in all genres. Each week, I endeavor to share the best of what I have gleaned. The determination of relevance lies with you. Blessings, Jim Whiddon

March 24, 2014

51. TAXATION “An unlimited power to tax involves, necessarily, a power to destroy; because there is a limit beyond which no institution and no property can bear taxation.”

–Chief Justice John Marshall, McCulloch v. Maryland, 1819
52. ACTION “We live in a world that, when it’s all said and done, there’s a lot said and very little done.”

— Jim Stovall

53. THE NEXT GENERATION “I think with you, that nothing is of more importance for the public weal [or welfare], than to form and train up youth in wisdom and virtue. Wise and good men are, in my opinion, the strength of the state; more so than riches or arms. I think also, that general more so than riches or arms. I think also, that general virtue is more probably to be expected and obtained from the education of youth, than from the exhortations of adult persons; bad habits and vices of the mind being, like diseases of the body, more easily prevented than cured. I think, moreover, that the talents for the education of youth are the gift of God; and that he on whom they are bestowed, whenever a way is opened for the use of them, is as strongly called as if he heard a voice from heaven….”

— Benjamin Franklin

54. COLLEGE “In the sprawling zoo of bad ideas, the five-hundred-pound gorillas are relativism and materialism. Sending your children off to college without thoroughly arming them against these simian behemoths is like pushing them into a jungle river filled with parasites and piranhas and expecting the experience to toughen them up. No one should be surprised if they get killed by an infection or eaten alive.”

Excerpt From: James Robison & Jay W. Richards. “Indivisible.”

55. WHY EVIL? “The only way to get a bad thing is to take a good thing and spoil it. For example, darkness isn’t made up from nothing; you get it by blocking the light. Disease isn’t made up from nothing; you get it by ruining health. Notice that this doesn’t work the other way around—you can’t get light by blocking darkness or health by ruining disease. So God created only good things, but some of them have been spoiled. That’s even true about Satan. He’s just a created being—an angel who was made good but went bad. To be evil at all, Satan needs good things that he can abuse, things like intelligence, power, and will. Those good things come from God.”

Excerpt From: Budziszewski, J. “How to Stay Christian in College.”

56. ROLE MODELS “No written word nor spoken plea Can teach our youth what they should be. Nor all the books on all the shelves. It’s what the teachers are themselves.”

—Unknown

57. GOD’S WORD “One of the disciplines I have found helpful in meditation is to repeat the verse again and again, putting the inflection on a different word each time. It is amazing how much insight comes from this simple practice for the young and the seasoned believer alike. The early church father Augustine said, “God’s Word is shallow enough not to drown the young, but deep enough that the greatest theologian will never touch the bottom.”

Excerpt From: O. S. Hawkins. “The Joshua Code.”

58. THE TRINITY “The Bible translates the Hebrew word Elohim here as God. The significance is that the word is in its plural form. It is a plural noun, thus hinting to us in the initial verse of Scripture that God is one pictured as three: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Interestingly, the verb created, which follows this noun, is in the singular form, seemingly making a mockery of grammar. Yet it should be singular in that He is the great Three in One. We see this truth revealed later in Genesis 1 when we read, “Let Us make man in Our image” (Genesis 1:26, emphasis added). And then the following verse reads, “So God created man in His own image” (v. 27, emphasis added). The doctrine of the Trinity is one of the great mysteries of the Bible. Yet, beginning with this first verse, the idea of the Trinity is woven throughout the Scripture. It is often illustrated by its similarities to H2O, two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen. We all know this to be water—a liquid. However, it can also be a solid (ice) or a vapor (steam). Yet, in all three manifestations, it is still the same in nature: H2O. And so it is with God manifesting Himself in three persons.”

Excerpt From: O. S. Hawkins. “The Joshua Code.”

59. INTERNET REGRET “Tattoos were once thought to be permanent. Now, they can largely be removed by special lasers. Your vasectomy can be reversed, death penalties can be commuted, and lifetime bans from sports rarely are. But the Internet? That, my friends, is forever.”

Excerpt From: David Avrin & Joe Calloway. “It’s Not Who You Know — It’s Who Knows You!.”

60. CARBON TAX “A British parliamentary committee proposed that every citizen be required to carry a carbon card that must be presented, under penalty of law, when buying gasoline, taking an airplane or using electricity. The card contains your yearly carbon ration to be drawn down with every purchase, every trip, every swipe. There’s no greater social power than the power to ration. And, other than rationing food, there is no greater instrument of social control than rationing energy, the currency of just about everything one does and uses in an advanced society.”

Excerpt From: Krauthammer, Charles. “Things That Matter.”

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The Wisdom Chronicle

The Wisdom Chronicle is designed to bring nuggets of wisdom from the dozens of books I read every year in all genres. Each week, I endeavor to share the best of what I have gleaned. The determination of relevance lies with you. Blessings, Jim Whiddon

March 17, 2014

41. GENERATIONS “The most considered and balanced statement of politics’ place in the hierarchy of human disciplines came, naturally, from an American. “I must study politics and war,” wrote John Adams, “that my sons may have the liberty to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, and naval architecture, navigation, commerce, and agriculture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry and porcelain.”

Adams saw clearly that politics is the indispensable foundation for things elegant and beautiful. First and above all else, you must secure life, liberty and the right to pursue your own happiness. That’s politics done right, hard-earned, often by war. And yet the glories yielded by such a successful politics lie outside itself. Its deepest purpose is to create the conditions for the cultivation of the finer things, beginning with philosophy and science, and ascending to the ever more delicate and refined arts.”

Excerpt From: Krauthammer, Charles. “Things That Matter.”

42. TYRANNY OF THE MAJORITY “Like other tyrannies, the tyranny of the majority was at first, and is still vulgarly, held in dread, chiefly as operating through the acts of the public authorities. But reflecting persons perceived that when society is itself the tyrant–society collectively, over the separate individuals who compose it–its means of tyrannizing are not restricted to the acts which it may do by the hands of its political functionaries. Society can and does execute its own mandates: and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with which it ought not to meddle, it practices a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself. Protection, therefore, against the tyranny of the magistrate is not enough; there needs protection also against the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling; against the tendency of society to impose, by other means than civil penalties, its own ideas and practices as rules of conduct on those who dissent from them; to fetter the development, and if possible, prevent the formation, of any individuality not in harmony with its ways, and compel all characters to fashion themselves upon the model of its own.

There is a limit to the legitimate interference of collective opinion with individual independence; and to find that limit, and maintain it against encroachment, is as indispensable to a good condition of human affairs, as protection against political despotism.

Excerpt From: John Stuart Mill. “On Liberty.” (1859)

43. TRY AGAIN “I have missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I have lost almost 300 games. On 26 occasions I have been entrusted to take the game winning shot….and I have missed. I have failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is precisely why I succeed.”

— Michael Jordan

44. KNOWING “Most of us know what to do. We fail because we don’t do what we know.”

Excerpt From: Jim Stovall & Tim Maurer. “The Ultimate Financial Plan.”

45. BIAS “Never ask a barber if you need a haircut.” –Warren Buffett

46. COST OF WEALTH “The poorest man would not part with health for money, but the richest would gladly part with all their money for health.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

47. PROTECTING OUR CHILDREN “When doctors inoculate children, they give them a less dangerous form of a pathogen, such as a virus. Billions of children, for instance, have received the smallpox vaccine. They don’t get the full-blown smallpox virus, but the much less virulent cowpox virus injected under their skin. This causes their immune system to kick in and build up a resistance to the virus.

Millions of parents, including Christians, expose their children to deadly ideas and influences for dozens of hours every week. They assume that an hour or two of church a week plus some short conversations at dinner should be enough to counteract thirty-five hours of TV per week, another thirty-five hours of secular schooling—a place where God is “He who must not be named”—another few hours of Internet surfing, and several more hours breathing in the ambient secular culture, not to mention the often unwholesome influence of classmates and friends.

“Christian” education didn’t take. They read a book by an atheist such as Richard Dawkins or Stephen Hawking, or got to graduate school or seminary, and realized they had been given caricatures of what their parents called “worldly ideas.” They were recruited by the very cultural forces that their parents tried to protect them from.

In some cases, the parents thought they were inoculating their kids; but they lacked discernment and taught things about science or history that fell apart when exposed to the evidence or intelligent objections. It was as if the parents opted for mysterious herbal remedies rather than a real smallpox vaccine.

In other cases, the parents spent so much of their energy helping their kids see the flaws in other Christian traditions that they neglected to help them see the glories of Christian history and the debilitating intellectual weaknesses of secularism and atheism. The ranks of prominent atheists are filled, not just with people who were raised in liberal mainline denominations, but with people who were raised in sheltered homes as conservative Christians. They tend to be the angry ones. Some even lost their faith during their time at Christian colleges that cost their parents a hundred thousand dollars.

Inoculation means that we expose our children to the best and strongest ideas that the world has to offer, but expose them in a way, and in an environment, that allows them to build up intellectual immunity.”

Excerpt From: James Robison & Jay W. Richards. “Indivisible.”

48. GOD’S WILL “During World War II, a man in Sussex, England, sent some money to the Scripture Gift Mission. He enclosed a letter saying that he longed to give more, but the harvest on his farm had been very disappointing because of a lack of water. He was also fearful because German bombs were being dropped in the area, and his family and farm were at risk. He asked the workers of Scripture Gift Mission to pray that no bombs would fall on his land.

Mr. Ashley Baker wrote back from the mission and said that while he didn’t feel led to pray that exact prayer, he had prayed that God’s will for their lives would prevail. Shortly after, a huge German missile crashed down on the farm. None of the man’s family or livestock were harmed, but the bombshell went so far into the ground that it liberated a submerged stream. The stream yielded enough water to irrigate the man’s farm as well as neighboring farms. The next year, due to a bountiful harvest, the man was able to send a large offering to the mission.

Sometimes even bombs are blessings. They fall from heaven, make a lot of noise, and liberate something wonderful within us—streams of living water that refresh us and draw us closer to Christ.”

Excerpt From: Jeremiah, David. “Searching for Heaven on Earth.”

49. PUNS “PEOPLE MAY CLAIM TO HATE PUNS, but most true word lovers have groaned to like them. Every parent should consider punning to be an essential part of good child rearing, if only because kids’ social hierarchy tends to slot young punsters in the nerdy, bookish, law-abiding, sexually late-blooming, high-SAT-score category. In other words, an appreciation for puns practically guarantees your child entry into a prestigious college and a career that supports you in your dotage.”

Excerpt From: Heinrichs, Jay. “Word Hero.”

50. DADS Obviously, being around is better than not being around, but being engaged is invaluable. One simply fills a role. The other anchors a life. It’s obvious when a dad is merely tolerating his kid. No one knows this more than the kid. At the same time, nothing so enlivens the life of a child as a dad who cares. When dad is listening and tracking and caring for his son’s soul, the world is a safer place.

Most dads never notice the deep need for approval their sons carry around. It’s potent. One word of encouragement can have a lifetime of effect. It only takes one sentence to change a son’s life forever, “Son, I’m proud of you.” Those men who’ve never received this type of approval spend a lifetime working for it. Those who get it have a sense of assurance the rest don’t.”

Excerpt From: Byron Forrest Yawn. “What Every Man Wishes His Father Had Told Him.”

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The Wisdom Chronicle

The Wisdom Chronicle is designed to bring nuggets of wisdom from the dozens of books I read every year in all genres. Each week, I endeavor to share the best of what I have gleaned. The determination of relevance lies with you. Blessings, Jim Whiddon

 

March 10, 2014

 

31. BE CAREFUL

“Talent is God-given: be humble.

Fame is man-given: be thankful.

Conceit is self-given: be careful.”

Excerpt From: Wooden, John. “Wooden: A Lifetime of Observations and Reflections On and Off the Court.”

32. ATHEISM GROWING  “The rise of the nones.” — Unknown

33. INHERITANCE  “The moment a young man or woman gets more money than he or she has grown to by practical experience, that moment he has gotten a curse. It is no help to a young man or woman to inherit money. It is no help to your children to leave them money, but if you leave them education, if you leave them Christian and noble character, if you leave them a wide circle of friends, if you leave them an honorable name, it is far better than that they should have money. It would be worse for them, worse for the nation, that they should have any money at all. Oh, young man, if you have inherited money, don’t regard it as a help. It will curse you through your years, and deprive you of the very best things of human life. There is no class of people to be pitied so much as the inexperienced sons and daughters of the rich of our generation. I pity the rich man’s son. He can never know the best things in life.”

Excerpt From: Russell Herman Conwell. “Acres of Diamonds.”

34. THE PRAYER OF SIR FRANCIS DRAKE

“Disturb us, Lord, when

We are too well pleased with ourselves,

When our dreams have come true

Because we have dreamed too little,

When we arrived safely

Because we sailed too close to the shore.

Disturb us, Lord, when

With the abundance of things we possess

We have lost our thirst

For the waters of life;

Having fallen in love with life,

We have ceased to dream of eternity

And in our efforts to build a new earth,

We have allowed our vision

Of the new Heaven to dim.

Disturb us, Lord, to dare more boldly,

To venture on wider seas

Where storms will show your mastery;

Where losing sight of land,

We shall find the stars.

We ask You to push back

The horizons of our hopes;

And to push into the future

In strength, courage, hope, and love.”

35. COLUMBUS “Balzac once suggested that all great fortunes are founded on a crime. So too all great civilizations. The European conquest of the Americas, like the conquest of other civilizations, was indeed accompanied by great cruelty. But that is to say nothing more than that the European conquest of America was, in this way, much like the rise of Islam, the Norman conquest of Britain and the widespread American Indian tradition of raiding, depopulating and appropriating neighboring lands. The real question is, What eventually grew on this bloodied soil? The answer is, The great modern civilizations of the Americas—a new world of individual rights, an ever-expanding circle of liberty and, twice in a century, a savior of the world from totalitarian barbarism. If we are to judge civilizations like individuals, they should all be hanged, because with individuals it takes but one murder to merit a hanging. But if one judges civilizations by what they have taken from and what they have given the world, a non-jaundiced observer—say, one of the millions in Central Europe and Asia whose eyes are turned with hope toward America—would surely bless the day Columbus set sail.”

Excerpt From: Krauthammer, Charles. “Things That Matter.”

36. TALL POPPY SYNDROME  “unspoken bias against achievement, lest one presume to be elevated above one’s mates” (from Australia)

37. TEACHER’S PET “Obnoxious ingratiation is best expressed in the form of a question.”

Excerpt From: Krauthammer, Charles. “Things That Matter.”

38. GETTING UNBIASED OPINIONS “The principle of independent judgments (and decorrelated errors) has immediate applications for the conduct of meetings, an activity in which executives in organizations spend a great deal of their working days. A simple rule can help: before an issue is discussed, all members of the committee should be asked to write a very brief summary of their position. This procedure makes good use of the value of the diversity of knowledge and opinion in the group. The standard practice of open discussion gives too much weight to the opinions of those who speak early and assertively, causing others to line up behind them.”

Excerpt From: Kahneman, Daniel. “Thinking, Fast and Slow.”

39. FREE SPEECH “If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.

If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.

The opinion which it is attempted to suppress by authority may possibly be true. Those who desire to suppress it, of course deny its truth; but they are not infallible. They have no authority to decide the question for all mankind, and exclude every other person from the means of judging. To refuse a hearing to an opinion, because they are sure that it is false, is to assume that their certainty is the same thing as absolute certainty. All silencing of discussion is an assumption of infallibility….for while every one well knows himself to be fallible, few think it necessary to take any precautions against their own fallibility, or admit the supposition that any opinion of which they feel very certain, may be one of the examples of the error to which they acknowledge themselves to be liable.”

Excerpt From: John Stuart Mill. “On Liberty.”

40. OPINIONS “There is the greatest difference between presuming an opinion to be true, because, with every opportunity for contesting it, it has not been refuted, and assuming its truth for the purpose of not permitting its refutation. Complete liberty of contradicting and disproving our opinion, is the very condition which justifies us in assuming its truth for purposes of action; and on no other terms can a being with human faculties have any rational assurance of being right.

Wrong opinions and practices gradually yield to fact and argument: but facts and arguments, to produce any effect on the mind, must be brought before it. Very few facts are able to tell their own story, without comments to bring out their meaning.

If even the Newtonian philosophy were not permitted to be questioned, mankind could not feel as complete assurance of its truth as they now do. The beliefs which we have most warrant for, have no safeguard to rest on, but a standing invitation to the whole world to prove them unfounded.”

Excerpt From: John Stuart Mill. “On Liberty.”

 

 

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The Wisdom Chronicle

The Wisdom Chronicle

 The Wisdom Chronicle, posted every Monday, is designed to bring nuggets of wisdom from myriad sources. I read 75-100 books per year in all genres. My goal is to share the best of what I come across each week. The determination of relevance lies with you. Blessings, Jim Whiddon

 March 3, 2014

21. EMBRACING SUFFERING “This is one of the great truths of life. Great men suffer greatly in order to be great. Heroic men must first endure heroic struggles with themselves. I’ve never read about a great man or woman of whom this was not true. If history is any guide, struggling manfully against our deformities is the beginning of greatness.

I believe most men make peace with their defects. They accept their flaws as simply the way they are, and so they never declare war on those parts of themselves that keep them from exceptional lives. Mediocrity becomes their lot in life; merely getting by their only hope.

Manly men know themselves, work to understand their God-ordained uniqueness and their unique brand of damage, and accept they will always be a work in progress, always be a one-man construction project that is never quite finished in this life. They don’t despair. They don’t settle. They don’t expect perfection of themselves. They understand that destiny is in the hand of God. They also understand that these destinies are fashioned in a man’s struggle against the enemies of his soul.”

Excerpt From: Mansfield, Stephen. “Mansfield’s Book of Manly Men.”

 

22. WHY “God writes over some of our days: ‘Will Explain Later.’  The word “why” occurs 430 times in the Bible—and you and I have asked it that many times or more.” — Evangelist Vance Havner.

23. INNOVATION “Many changes that have transformed enterprises have originated outside the specific industry of that enterprise. Here is a notable example. The zipper was originally invented to close bales of heavy goods, such as grain, particularly in seaports. Nobody thought of using it for clothing. The clothing industry did not think it could replace buttons. And the inventor never dreamed it would be successful in the clothing industry.”

Excerpt From: Peter F. Drucker. “The Daily Drucker.”

 

24. STORM THAT GAVE US OUR LANGUAGE “America could easily have been a Spanish-speaking nation, but an intense rivalry between Spain and England, particularly during the latter part of the sixteenth century, put America up for grabs. Spain’s domination of the oceans was challenged by England and the Dutch, who were building an extremely large merchant marine fleet in Europe. The final nail in the coffin of Spanish domination of the oceans took place in 1588, when the Spanish Armada was sunk in a battle with the English and, more importantly, by a ferocious storm, which decimated their mighty fleet. Because the English dominated the seas in the early 1600s, they decided it was their right to begin colonizing America, and the first of the permanent English colonies, Jamestown, was established in 1607.”

Excerpt From: Ben Carson, M.D. “America the Beautiful.”

 

25. LEADING “A man who fails to lead is leading to failure.” –unknown

26. PERSPECTIVE “American Olympic speed skater Dan Jansen suffered a series of devastating defeats and setbacks in his career until 1994, when he finally took the gold in a thrilling 1,000-meter race in Lillehammer, Norway. As a young skater he learned to keep defeat in perspective. Competing in the youth national skating championships in Minnesota at the age of nine, he was positioned to capture the title when he tripped on a lane marker coming around a turn.

That mistake cost him the victory. He was so distraught that he cried through the awards ceremony and the entire six-hour drive home. His father didn’t say anything about the loss until they pulled into their driveway, but what he said then has stuck with Jansen ever since: “You know, Dan, there’s more to life than skating around in a circle.”

That might strike you as an insensitive remark from a father to a heartbroken son, but it is true. It arises from the father’s enhanced perspective, which indeed renders the pain smaller and less significant. Dan Jansen, being a veteran competitor even at age nine, needed that greater perspective. It helped him pursue his Olympic dream while remembering the true place of victory and defeat.

Wisdom may not solve all our problems or smooth out all the bumps in the road, but it gives the mind the right information for controlling the emotions.”

Excerpt From: Jeremiah, David. “Searching for Heaven on Earth.”

 

27. THE US CONSTITUTION’S ACHILLES “….the words that came to him were the same ones Henry had spoken over the previous two weeks. [during ratification process in Virginia] “Virtue will slumber,” Henry had warned. The Constitution could not hold it up. “The wicked will be continually watching,” he cried to the heavens. “Consequently you will be undone.”

The words repeated themselves, over and over again, faster and faster, in James Madison’s mind. “Virtue will slumber. The wicked will be continually watching. Consequently you will be undone.”

Excerpt From: Beck, Glenn. “Miracles and Massacres.”

 

28. CONGRESS “In his centennial address to Congress in 1876, President James A. Garfield issued a warning widely reported in the press at that time. He said, “Now, more than ever before, the people are responsible for the character of their Congress. If that body be ignorant, reckless, and corrupt, it is because the people tolerate ignorance, recklessness, and corruption. If it be intelligent, brave, and pure, it is because the people demand these high qualities to represent them in the national legislature.” Then, he added, “If [one hundred years from now] the next centennial does not find us a great nation . . ..it will be because those who represent the enterprise, the culture, and the morality of the nation do not aid in controlling the political forces.”

Excerpt From: Andrews, Andy. “How Do You Kill 11 Million People?”

 

29. GRACE “Mercy is not getting what we do deserve; grace is getting what we do not deserve. The Christian life is not simply a changed life but an exchanged life.”

Excerpt From: O. S. Hawkins. “The Joshua Code.”

 

30. JESUS’ ECONOMY “Jesus was always talking about a reverse economy. He talked about how if you want to receive, you give. If you want to lead, you follow. That the poor are rich and you only really live for certain things if you are willing to die to them.”

Excerpt From: Goff, Bob. “Love Does.”

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The Wisdom Chronicle

The Wisdom Chronicle, posted every Monday, is designed to bring nuggets of wisdom from myriad sources. I read 75-100 books per year in all genres. My goal is to share the best of what I come across each week. The determination of relevance lies with you. Blessings, Jim Whiddon

11. HARD WORK “There is no elevator to success—you have to take the stairs.” — Unknown

12. MAN’S BEST FRIEND “A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of.” — Ogden Nash

13. SERENDIPITY “The story of 3M’s Post-it! Notes was well chronicled in Tom Peter’s classic book, In Search of Excellence. What was (and is) fascinating about the story is not merely the success of the sticky notes, it’s the fact that 3M, well known for its strong adhesives, screwed-up during research and development and created an unusually weak and seemingly useless adhesive. In fact, the glue was so weak that it couldn’t hold paper together permanently. Voila!

Velcro was developed in the 1960s by NASA to hold things down so they wouldn’t float all over the place in outer space.

Preparation H is used by actors to remove the puffiness under their eyes.”

Excerpt From: Avrin, David. “It’s Not Who You Know — It’s Who Knows You!.”

14.SELF EDUCATION “Most great men in history have become great because they aggressively pursued knowledge. They overcame gaps in their early education. They studied to understand the world at a level well beyond their years. They took responsibility for their education and did not wait for the knowledge they needed to come to them.

There isn’t the space here to list all the great men who set themselves apart through self-education. Winston Churchill read so ravenously when he was a young officer in India that a biographer later wrote that “he became his own university.” Lincoln was also enflamed by a hunger to learn. He read every book he could buy or borrow.

Devotion to self-education is unquestionably one of the marks of an exceptional man. Passive men wait for knowledge to come to them. Weak men assume what they need to know will seek them out. Men of great character and drive search out the knowledge they need. They take responsibility for knowing what they must know to live effectively in their generation and to prosper. I know this sounds old school. I know this sounds like a lesson meant for the barefoot boy born in a dirt-floor cabin in the 1800s. I assure you it is a lesson for men today. In fact, it may prove to be one of the most important lessons for men today.”

Excerpt From: Mansfield, Stephen. “Mansfield’s Book of Manly Men.”

15. COMFORT  “Our Heavenly Father has provided many delightful inns for us along our journey, but He takes great care to see that we do not mistake any of them for home.” — C.S Lewis

16. HISTORY WRITTEN BY THOSE WITH BEST PRESS AGENTS “It was Amerigo Vespucci, an acquaintance of Columbus, who is credited with America’s discovery in 1497, five years after Columbus landed in the Caribbean Islands while searching for a new route to the spice-rich Far East. Chinese Admiral Cheng Ho, who visited the Americas in 1421, could lay claim as well — and there is also evidence that Scandinavian explorer Leif Erikson reached the Americas hundreds of years before any of these other explorers.” Excerpt From: Ben Carson, M.D. “America the Beautiful.”

17. COMMITMENT “Some people want to master every corner of the God question before they make a commitment to believe in Him, and they miss the heart of the issue—the issue of the heart.”

Excerpt From: Jeremiah, David. “Searching for Heaven on Earth.”

18. RESPONSIBILITY OF OUR GENERATION “If there must be trouble,” said American revolutionary Thomas Paine, “let it be in my day, that my child may have peace.”

Will our grandchildren enjoy the freedom and prosperity we enjoy, or will they ask us, “Where were you when freedom died?”

As Dietrich Bonhoeffer said, “Not to stand is to stand. Not to speak is to speak.”

Saint Catherine of Siena said, “If you are what you should be, you will set the whole world on fire.”

Excerpt From: James Robison & Jay W. Richards. “Indivisible.”

19. LAWS AND MORALS “Did the abolition of slavery and the passage of civil rights laws affect people’s attitudes about slavery and race? Did Roe v. Wade, which struck down state restrictions on abortion, influence people’s views on abortion? If same-sex “marriage” is made the law of the land, do you think that will affect the sexual attitudes and actions of schoolchildren? If suicide for the terminally ill becomes widely accepted, do you think this will affect how we view the sick and the elderly? If the sale of marijuana is legalized, will that influence views on the morality of smoking pot? Yes, yes, yes, yes, and yes.”

Excerpt From: James Robison & Jay W. Richards. “Indivisible.”

20. WORRY ABOUT FUTURE  “We would rather have the security of our yesterday than the uncertainty of our tomorrow.

But it’s the uncertainty of our future that really strengthens our faith. I mean, if we knew what it was all about, then it would take no faith. All it would take is obedience. If you knew what was going to happen in the next ten years of your life, what kind of faith would it take to walk that path?

It’s the mystery of it all that gives it the power, the mystery of the whole process called God’s working that makes the power so magnificent.”

Excerpt From: Charles R. Swindoll. “Wisdom for the Way.”

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The Wisdom Chronicle

The Wisdom Chronicle is designed to bring nuggets of wisdom from myriad sources. In reading 75-100 books per year in all genres, my mission is to share the best excerpts I come across each week. The determination of relevance lies with you. Blessings, Jim Whiddon

1. CHINESE PROVERB: “It is better that wisdom come late rather than not at all.”

2. IDEAS “The most dangerous ideas in a society are not the ones being argued, but the ones that are assumed.” — C.S. Lewis

3. HYBRID CARS “Paying up for a car that will save on gas. Lexus makes a hybrid that gets an extra four to five miles a gallon but costs something like $30,000 more than the conventional model. My friend Barry Ritholtz, author of Bailout Nation, recently flagged a Barron’s review of the hybrid. Barron’s pointed out that if gas cost four dollars a gallon, it would take something like two hundred years of driving 15,000 miles annually to cover the extra cost of this hybrid.” Excerpt From: Richards, Carl. “The Behavior Gap.”

4. PLANNING “Think of the difference between a flight plan and an actual flight. Flight plans are really just the pilot’s best guess about things like the weather. No matter how much time the pilot spent planning, things don’t always go according to the plan.In fact, they rarely go just the way the pilot planned. There are just too many variables. So while the plan is important, the key to arriving safely is the pilot’s ability to make the small and consistent course corrections. It is about the course corrections, not the plan.” Excerpt From: Richards, Carl. “The Behavior Gap.”

5. NAMES “The secret of the universe is the naming of things” — Native American saying

6. BIBLICAL WORLDVIEW “When we neglect or reject the revealed truth of Scripture, even our most brilliant scientists and professors are little more than mice scurrying around inside a piano, analyzing all the hammers and strings, willfully ignorant of the musical score sitting on the stand above the keys.” “it is exceedingly odd that scholars master whole libraries seeking wisdom, while the janitor nearby has enjoyed it for years.” Excerpt From: Jeremiah, David. “Searching for Heaven on Earth.”

7. LEAVING TOO MUCH FOR KIDS “French novelist Gaston Leroux, creator of The Phantom of the Opera, was almost destroyed in this way. When his father died suddenly, leaving him with a fortune of almost one million francs, Gaston abandoned his career and relaxed into a dissipated existence of gambling and pleasure in colorful Paris society. Within a year he had squandered his inheritance— another sadder but wiser prodigal. Solomon is warning us that accumulating mountains of money becomes meaningless to us within two seconds of death. In fact, the very reality of death strips our possessions of lasting significance.” Excerpt From: Jeremiah, David. “Searching for Heaven on Earth.”

8. STEWARDSHIP “How important it is, then, to keep God in the middle of our bank accounts, our possessions, and our portfolios. Picture your hands out in front of you, cupped together, palms up. In your open hands are all the things He has entrusted to you—money, cars, a home, furniture, everything. All of this is His gift (James 1:17). We are the stewards, and faithfulness is our charge. That means our hands must never close over the gifts, but remain open so that He may use them as required—and refill our hands.” Excerpt From: Jeremiah, David. “Searching for Heaven on Earth.”

9. UNCERTAINTY OF LIFE “It is said that on Veteran’s Day! November 11, 1963, President John F. Kennedy visited Arlington Cemetery to pay his respects to America’s fallen heroes. Gazing over the rolling Virginia hillside from Arlington House, he remarked, “It is so beautiful that I could stay here forever.” Two weeks later he returned in a flag-draped coffin to be buried beneath an eternal flame.” Excerpt From: Jeremiah, David. “Searching for Heaven on Earth.”

10. REPLENISHMENT “You are literally not the same person you were seven years ago physically.  Scientists tell us that every seven years we replenish all the cells within our bodies. What about spiritually?” Excerpt From: Jeremiah, David. “Searching for Heaven on Earth.”

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