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

281. FAITH-BASED “Faith in mankind is harder to sustain than faith in God. Where secular organizations place their faith in the human person, religious organizations recognize that human persons—divorced from God—can never truly deal with the problems most fundamental to human society. Poverty may be alleviated, but prosperity brings its fair share of problems along with it.”

Excerpt From: Peter Greer, Chris Horst & Anna Haggard. “Mission Drift.”

282. WISDOM “One of the primary ways God protects us is through the wisdom he grants when we strive to walk in his ways. Obedience to him protects us from all kinds of dangers — not so much because he miraculously intervenes but because he doesn’t have to. Obedience sets us on a wise course.”

Excerpt From: Harris, Raymond. “The Heart of Business.”

283. BIBLE CHANGED? When someone says that the Bible has been changed by men over the years, ask them to consider:

“How does someone remove select lines of text from tens of thousands of handwritten documents that had been circulating around the Mediterranean region for over three hundred years? This would be like trying to secretly remove a paragraph from all the copies of yesterday’s L.A. Times. It can’t be done.”

Excerpt From: Koukl, Gregory. “Tactics.” Zondervan. iBooks.

284. SIN AND ECONOMY “Sin is a constant in both Capitalism and Socialism. The difference is that in socialism, you have sin plus COERCION, with capitalism, there is sin plus FREEDOM of choice.”

— Jerry Boyer

285. WINNERS “The moderately successful person focuses on the roadblocks, on how to get over or around them. The winner focuses on the goal.”

— Tom Harrison

286. ENTITLEMENT “saying among poker players: If you’re at the table for more than half an hour and can’t tell who the sucker is, you’re it. Similarly, if you’re a college graduate in your early twenties, and you look around at your peers and can’t see a problem with a sense of entitlement, maybe you have a problem.”

Excerpt From: Murray, Charles. “The Curmudgeon’s Guide to Getting Ahead.”

287. CUSTOMERS “In the midst of a world filled with ambivalent salespeople, there is one company that has been a winner for three decades because it takes a people-centered approach to everything it does: Nordstrom. The word no never entered into their vocabulary.

When company chairman Bruce Nordstrom was asked who trains his people, his response was “their parents.”

Excerpt From: Luntz, Frank. “Win.”

288. A GREAT MARRIAGE 1. Marry someone with similar tastes and preferences. Which tastes and preferences? The ones that will affect life almost every day. It’s okay if you like the ballet and your spouse doesn’t. Reasonable people can accommodate each other on such differences. But if you dislike each other’s friends, or don’t get each other’s sense of humor, or—especially—if you have different ethical impulses, break it off and find someone else.

Personal habits that you find objectionable in each other might be deal-breakers. Jacques Barzun identified the top three as punctuality, orderliness, and thriftiness.

2. What you see is what you’re going to get. If something about your prospective spouse bothers you, but you think that you can change your beloved after you’re married, you’re wrong.

3. It is absolutely crucial that you really, really like your spouse. You hear it all the time from people who are in great marriages: “I’m married to my best friend.” They are being literal. They enjoy the day-to-day company of their spouses more than they enjoy the company of anyone else, they can talk to their spouses more openly than they can talk to anyone else, and they can be quietly companionable with their spouses as with no one else. Occasionally this kind of compatibility can develop after marriage, but it’s more common to be apparent beforehand. People often lament how hard it is to know whether one is truly in love. That’s true. But it’s not hard to know how much you like someone. Focus on that question even more than you focus on whether you’re in love. Here are two things to worry about as you do so: A) Do you sometimes pick at each other’s sore spots? You have fun together, the sex is great, but one of you is controlling, or nags the other, or won’t let a difference of opinion go. I believe that two people who love each other should be careful to avoid saying anything that will inflict hurt. Occasionally there will be an overwhelmingly compelling reason why the hurtful thing must be said. But if your prospective spouse says hurtful things heedlessly, or seems to take any pleasure whatsoever in causing hurt, break it off.

4. A good marriage is the best thing that can ever happen to you. Above all else, realize that this cliché is true. The downside risks of marrying—and they are real—are nothing compared to what you will gain from a good one.”

Excerpt From: Murray, Charles. “The Curmudgeon’s Guide to Getting Ahead.”

289. EINSTEIN “Einstein had a boyhood dream of what it would be like to ride on a light wave. Is it physically possible? Could you actually ride on a light wave? And then, years later, he comes up with his theory of relativity. He asked one question as a six-year-old—a pretty amazing question. Would it physically be possible to ride on a light wave through space? And the whole world changed because of that one question from a six-year-old.”

—JIM DAVIDSON, CO-CEO, SILVER LAKE

290. CAN’T TAKE IT WITH YOU After he died someone asked his accountant, ‘How much money did John D. Rockefeller leave?’ And the reply: ‘He left … all of it.’

— Unknown

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

271. “The founding fathers of America were extremely well-educated men and great students of history, “the well fed, well bred, well read, and well wed,” as historian James McGregor Burns described them. They represented a nouveau aristocracy, not by birth as in the mother countries, but through development of their minds and talents.”

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

272. TAXES “So when Jesus says to give to God what is God’s, and to Caesar what is Caesar’s, He’s claiming that Caesar isn’t God, and that God’s authority is outside Caesar’s jurisdiction. Caesar has some legitimate claim to taxes if one participates in the Roman monetary system, but he has no claim on our ultimate allegiance. God is God. Caesar is not”

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

273. WISDOM “Some define wisdom as “seeing life from God’s point of view.” I prefer to say that wisdom is the ability to apply biblical truth to real-life Without the Bible, no one can be wise, for wisdom is the ability to see more than things as they are “under the sun.” It’s the ability to perceive how the God of heaven sees a situation and to apply His divine wisdom to it.”

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

274. DECISIONS “More often than not, the ability to make good decisions is the result of making bad ones first. An insightful man once said, “It’s a wise man who makes a good second decision.”

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

275. GOD’S LOVE “Does it hurt your feelings that God doesn’t need you? Maybe you think this means He doesn’t love you. No, you have it backward. It means He loves you even better than you thought. True, I might well suspect that my wife didn’t love me if she said she didn’t need me. But that’s because human love can’t be separated from need. We love not only to fulfill the needs of other people but also to fulfill our own. And that’s all right up to a point because God made us full of needs. But His love isn’t like ours. It’s not need-love; it’s pure gift-love. Though He needs nothing from us, He pours Himself out for us. Nothing drove Him to create us, yet He did.”

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

276. FORGIVE OTHERS “THERE IS SOME GOOD IN THE WORST OF US AND SOME EVIL IN THE BEST OF US. WHEN WE DISCOVER THIS, WE ARE LESS PRONE TO HATE OUR ENEMIES.”

—Martin Luther King Jr.”

277. THE BIRTH AND THE GREAT CELESTIAL CONFLICT “Most of you probably have a Nativity scene that you take out over the holidays and place on a mantel or coffee table. Most of these scenes share a regular cast of characters: shepherds, wise men, maybe a few barnyard animals, Joseph, Mary, and, of course, the baby Jesus. Yes, ours has an angel or two and I imagine yours does as well. But that’s about as far as the supernatural gets. What is the overall mood of the scene? Don’t they all have a sort of warm, pastoral atmosphere to them, a quiet, intimate feel like the one you get when you sing Silent Night or Away in a Manger? And while that’s all very true, it is also very deceiving because it is not a full picture of what’s really going on. For that, you have to turn to Revelation 12:

“A great and wondrous sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head. She was pregnant and cried out in pain as she was about to give birth. Then another sign appeared in heaven: an enormous red dragon with seven heads and ten horns and seven crowns on his heads. His tail swept a third of the stars out of the sky and flung them to the earth. The dragon stood in front of the woman who was about to give birth, so that he might devour her child the moment it was born. She gave birth to a son, a male child, who will rule all the nations with an iron scepter . . . And there was war in heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon and his angels fought back. But he was not strong enough, and they lost their place in heaven. The great dragon was hurled down—that ancient serpent called the devil or Satan, who leads the whole world astray. He was hurled to the earth, and his angels with him.” (vv. 1–5, 7–9)

As Philip Yancey says, I have never seen this version of the story on a Christmas card. Yet it is the truer story, the rest of the picture of what was

going on that fateful night. Yancey calls the birth of Christ the Great Invasion, “a daring raid by the ruler of the forces of good into the universe’s

seat of evil.” Spiritually speaking, this is no silent night. It is D-Day. It is almost beyond my comprehension too, and yet I accept that this notion is the key to understanding Christmas and is, in fact, the touchstone of my faith. As a Christian I believe that we live in parallel worlds. One world consists of hills and lakes and barns and politicians and shepherds watching their flocks by night. The other consists of angels and sinister forces and the whole spiritual realm. The child is born, the woman escapes and the story continues like this: “Then the dragon was enraged at the woman and went off to make war against the rest of her offspring—those who obey God’s commandments and hold to the testimony of Jesus.” (Rev. 12:17)

Behind the world and the flesh is an even more deadly enemy . . . one we rarely speak of and are even much less ready to resist. Yet this is where we live now—on the front lines of a fierce spiritual war that is to blame for most of the casualties you see around you and most of the assault against you. It’s time we prepared ourselves for it.”

Excerpt From: Eldredge, John. “Wild at Heart.”

278. HUSBAND’S SACRIFICE “One thing is certain: we are to give ourselves up [for our wives] just as Jesus did for his church. Dying to save her. Dying to rescue her. Dying to present her pure to her God. That, gentleman, is the calling of a Isn’t it interesting that the stereotype of a modern man is exactly opposite this? You’ve seen this stereotype played out on the screen. The man is all about himself. His food, his hobbies, his addictions, his deformities, and his vanities dominate his life and the lives in his family. He is one big black hole of self, a giant suck hole of self-interest.”

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

279. SYNONYMS FOR FAITH “My favorite book isn’t War and Peace or Huckleberry Finn, although Huckleberry Finn is close. It’s a thesaurus. The reason is simple. There are hundreds of words, probably thousands of them listed that can capture an idea or thought and propose words to describe those thoughts or ideas with greater precision, which would add much more clarity to what I’m trying to say. Now I try to explain my faith in much the same way a thesaurus does and see if I can’t swap a word that is used far too much for another that might add more meaning, more life.”

Excerpt From: Goff, Bob. “Love Does.”

280. SLOW AND STEADY “When you improve a little each day, eventually big things occur. Don’t look for the big, quick improvement. Seek the small improvement one day at a time. That’s the only way it happens—and when it happens, it lasts.”

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

 

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

261. SALVATION “the Bible doesn’t agree with the view that it’s hard to find out about God. It claims that people make it hard. The apostle Paul wrote that the truth about God was “plain” to the pagans and that in some sense they “knew” it but that they “suppressed” it by their wickedness (see Romans 1:18-23). Jesus made this even clearer by saying that those who seek will find. If this is true, then those who don’t find aren’t wholeheartedly seeking—they are just telling themselves that they are (see Matthew 7:7-8).”
Excerpt From: Budziszewski, J. “How to Stay Christian in College.”

262. SEX = COMMITMENT? “Love is a commitment of the will to the true good of another person, but we also said that its seal is the binding promise of marriage. Before that point, everything is reversible, even engagement. So how can you tell whether you’ve got a commitment? Simple. If you’re married, you have one. If you’re not married, you don’t. Do you have a boyfriend who says he’s committed to you but he’s just not ready for marriage? He’s lying.”
Excerpt From: Budziszewski, J. “How to Stay Christian in College.”

263. PROVIDENCE “[we] stumbled upon the little town of Saint Buryan, in Southern England – a crossroad in the country with a pub, a decaying church, and a graveyard. We stopped and read a few of the gravestones. One that was barely legible commemorated a family that lived in the 1600s. Buried beneath the stone were the mother, who gave birth to a son and died just ten days later at the age of twenty-four; her son, who lived thirteen months; and the father, who died a few days later at age twenty-five.
The faded words on that weathered limestone grave marker [said this]:
“We cannot, Lord, Thy purpose see
But all is well that’s done by Thee.”
Excerpt From: Rainey, Dennis. “Stepping Up.”

264. SUCCESS “Believing that making money is a selfish activity will undermine anyone’s chances of success.”
Excerpt From: Rabbi Daniel Lapin. “Thou Shall Prosper.”

265. SAYING ‘NO’ “It is easier to resist at the beginning than at the end.”
— Leonardo deVinci

266. RAISING CHRISTIANS “An overprotected generation has been sold the lie that “Christian living” means material blessing, automatic protection, and bulletproof safety. Two millennia of Christian martyrs beg to differ, and many young adults today are interested in those martyrs’ lives of jeopardy and fulfillment. They are desperate for a new way to understand and experience the worthy risks of following Christ. Life without some sense of urgency—a life that is safe, incubated, insular, overprotected, consumptive—is not worth living. The next generation is aching for influence, for significance, for lives of meaning and impact. Think of your favorite film or novel. Invariably the best stories, regardless of medium, involve significant hazards for the characters. We care about characters for whom the stakes are high—yet we have done all we can to lower the stakes for the newest real-life protagonists in God’s grand, risky story.”
Excerpt From: Kinnaman, David. “You Lost Me.”

267. TRIALS Daniel prayed for deliverance from King Darius’ decision to throw him in the lion’s den. But God did not deliver him UNTIL he was already in the den. Sometimes God let’s you go into the den because that is where He will show Himself to you.
–CS Lewis

268. SPORTS “Lacking the emotional skills to discern the damage to my sense of self, I sought approval from Dah [my dad] through sports and my achievements on the field. I continued to think that if I played well, he would give me acceptance and a gesture of approval. It was an unabashed transaction, a conditional relationship that my father used to try to turn me into the man he wanted me to be. And I complied.
But there is not a more flawed measure of a child’s value than sports. The playing fields are uneven; genetics skew the results in favor of the proper body type for each sport; dedication and determination can do only so much. And yet some parents and coaches use performance as the measure of a child’s worth.”
Excerpt From: Joe Ehrmann, Paula Ehrmann & Gregory Jordan. “InSideOut Coaching.”

269. PROVIDENCE Technically worms don’t have hearts but five aortic arches that for simplicity’s sake are commonly called “hearts.” The aortic arch functions as a heart, although there are no chambers. Worms also don’t have lungs. They absorb oxygen through their skin and then it gets into their blood vessels. The dorsal blood vessel does a bit of the pumping work, with the hearts helping to keep the blood pressure steady. I know you have a pretty busy life with a lot going on, but take a minute to think about how God regulates blood pressure. Not your blood pressure, but the blood pressure of the earthworms in the ground below you. That’s how detailed the providence of God truly is. He governs the entire universe, and if He even governs the blood pressure of worms, that simple fact should reduce your blood pressure. In other words, if He’s taking care of the worms, He’s obviously got you covered too.” Excerpt From: Farrar, Steve. “Real Valor.”

270. REDEMPTION It is said that “every man has his price.” The reality is the price for you has already been paid. Jesus did it.
–Steve Ferrar

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

251. OBEDIENCE “Judas heard all Christ’s sermons.” That’s a quote from Thomas Goodwin, and I find it chilling. Think on that for a moment. Judas heard every sermon our Lord preached. He was an eyewitness of every miracle. But he never obeyed; he never yielded on the inside.”

Excerpt From: Farrar, Steve. “True Courage.”

252. OPPORTUNITY “The lure of the distant and the difficult is deceptive. The great opportunity is where you are.”

— John Burroughs

253. CRISIS PREVENTION “The time to repair the roof is when the sun is shining.”

— John F. Kennedy

254. COMMITTEES “The unwilling picked from the unfit to do the unnecessary.”

Excerpt From: Michael O’Malley, Ph.D. “The Wisdom of Bees.”

255. CHILDREN “When children are young, give them roots; when they grow, give them wings.”

— Unknown

256. CONFUCIUS “When you are joyful, do not make promises; when you are angry, do not mail a letter.”

257. MANHOOD “The first false idea about manhood is the idea of being macho—of being a big shot and using strength to be domineering and to bully those who are weaker. Obviously this is not God’s idea of what a real man is. It’s someone who has not grown up emotionally, who might be a man on the outside, but who on the inside is simply an insecure and selfish boy. The second false choice is to be emasculated—to essentially turn away from your masculinity and to pretend that there is no real difference between men and women. Your strength as a man has no purpose, so being strong isn’t even a good God’s idea of manhood is something else entirely: God’s idea of making men strong was so that they would use that strength to protect women and children and anyone else. There’s something heroic in that. Male strength is a gift from God, and like all gifts from God, it’s always and everywhere meant to be used to bless others.”

Excerpt From: Metaxas, Eric. “Seven Men.”

258. WAITING “We tend to think that if God is really engaged, He will change things within the next hour or so. Certainly by sundown. Absolutely by the end of the week. But God is not a slave to the human clock. Compared to the works of mankind, He is extremely deliberate and painfully slow. As religious poet George Herbert wisely penned, “God’s mill grinds slow, but sure.” . . .”

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

259. NATIONAL DECLINE “We can follow the advice of Demosthenes when asked what was to be done about the decline of Athens. His reply? “I will give what I believe is the fairest and truest answer: Don’t do what you are doing now.”

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

260. GOD’S PHONE “Call to Me, and I will answer you, and show you great and mighty things, which you do not know.” JEREMIAH 33:3 God’s phone number. The line is never busy. Your call never goes to voice mail. He always answers—and He answers in a way that far exceeds our most optimistic expectations (Ephesians 3:20).

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

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

231. GOD’S ECONOMY “In the world’s economy people are defined by what they have accomplished. In God’s economy, they are defined by who they have become as a result of God’s transformation of their hearts. God values what we bring to heaven, not the material wealth and possessions we leave on earth.”

Excerpt From: Harris, Raymond. “The Heart of Business.”

232. GLOBAL POVERTY “There’s an ugly secret of global poverty, one rarely acknowledged by aid groups or U.N. reports. It’s a blunt truth that is politically incorrect, heartbreaking, frustrating and ubiquitous: It’s that if the poorest families spent as much money educating their children as they do on wine, cigarettes and prostitutes, their children’s prospects would be transformed.”

Excerpt From: Peter Greer, Chris Horst & Anna Haggard. “Mission Drift.”

233. BIBLE NOT AUTHENTIC? Assertion: “You can’t take the Bible too seriously because it was only written by men, and men make mistakes. Response: Do you have any books in your library? Were those books written by humans? Do you find any truth in them? Is there a reason you think the Bible is less truthful or reliable than other books you own? Do people always make mistakes in what they write? Do you think that if God did exist, he would be capable of using humans to write down exactly what he wants?”

Excerpt From: Koukl, Gregory. “Tactics.”

234. DEATH BY MINNOWS “Getting eaten by a whale or nibbled to death by minnows results in the same thing, although one demise is typically more difficult to diagnose.”

–Steve Haas

235. SOCIAL MEDIA “Defined as linking all human life on the planet into one gigantic brainstem throbbing with unintelligible thought.”

— Stanley Bing

236. PARENTING “Good parenting, from my perspective, is like building a three-foot retaining wall against a four-foot wave. The kids have to make up that extra foot. That wave wants to drag them into an undertow where sound judgment is suspended, where the valueless, uncaring, and ultimately nihilistic cool reigns. In other words, where the Kardashians are royalty.”

Excerpt From: Gutfeld, Greg. “Not Cool.”

237. GOVT HANDOUTS “[A] misguided view of charity has replaced real charity. As our government pretends to offer handouts, it’s really just spreading the wealth around, without wondering where that wealth has come from. In the end, redistribution kills ambition, saps the energy that fuels the American dream, and makes all of us poorer each passing day. Our consciousness may be raised, but our options for wealth and success dwindle.”

Excerpt From: Gutfeld, Greg. “Not Cool.”

238. DEATH AND TAXES “It might be comforting to think that when the Earth that nourish’d thee…claim[s] thy growth, thy tax dollars will have gone toward planting the tree thou fertilize’th.”

— 17th century American poet William Cullen Bryant

239. RULES Rules without relationship = rebellion.

— Josh McDowell

240. SEX EDUCATION “We should not be ashamed to discuss that which God was not ashamed to create.”

— Howard Hendricks

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

221. JUDGING RIGHTLY “Why is it that those who are the quickest to judge are often those in possession of the fewest facts?”

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

222. ADVERSITY

“Looking back it seems to me,

All the grief that had to be

Left me when the pain was o’er

Stronger than I was before.”

—Unknown

223. PHYSICAL APPEARANCE Human self-image thrives on physical attractiveness, athletic ability, a worthwhile occupation. But, paradoxically, any of those desirable qualities may raise a barrier against the image of God, for virtually any quality that a person can rely on makes it more difficult for that person to rely on the spirit of God. The beautiful, the strong, the politically powerful, and the rich do not easily represent God’s image. Rather, God’s spirit shines most brightly through the frailty of the weak, the impotence of the poor, the deformity of the hunchback. Even as bodies are broken, God’s image can grow brighter.”

“I do not say that a Miss Universe or a handsome Olympian can never show forth the love and power of God, but I do believe that such a person is, in some ways, at a disadvantage. Talent, a pleasing physical appearance, and the adulation of crowds tend to shove aside the qualities of humility and selflessness and love that Christ demands of those who would bear his image.”

“Let not the wise man boast of his wisdom or the strong man boast of his strength or the rich man boast of his riches, but let him who boasts boast about this: that he understands and knows me, that I am the LORD, who exercises kindness, justice and righteousness on earth, for in these I delight (Jeremiah 9:23 – 24).”

Excerpt From: Yancey, Philip. “In His Image.”

224. LONG TERM SUCCESS “Amos Alonzo Stagg. He was coaching football at the University of Chicago when they were a national power. After one very successful year a reporter said, “Coach Stagg, it was a great year! A really great year.”

Coach Stagg said, “I won’t know for another twenty years or so whether you’re correct.”

He meant that it would take that long to see how the youngsters under his supervision turned out in life.”

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

225. TRY THIS IN A MEETING “Answer someone who expresses doubt about your idea with “Okay, let’s tweak it.” Now focus the argument on revising your idea as if the group had already accepted it. This move is a form of concession—rhetorical jujitsu that uses your opponent’s moves to your advantage.”

Excerpt From: Heinrichs, Jay. “Thank You For Arguing, Revised and Updated Edition.”

226. GOD SHAPES US “And when each of us looks back at all the turns and folds God has allowed in our lives, I don’t think it looks like a series of folded-over mistakes and do-overs that have shaped our lives. Instead, I think we’ll conclude in the end that maybe we’re all a little like human origami and the more creases we have, the better.”

Excerpt From: Goff, Bob. “Love Does.”

227. THE FUTURE “What is that key component and central question?

It’s simply this: Will you, or will you not, trust God for your future?”

Excerpt From: Farrar, Steve. “True Courage.”

228. JUSTICE “Blessed is the nation whose God is The Lord. Indeed I tremble for my country when I ponder that God is just and His justice cannot sleep forever.”

— Thomas Jefferson

229. COURAGE When given an opportunity to deny Christ and save his life: “There can be no deliberation in a matter so sacred.”

— early Christian Cyprian

230. CULTURE CLASH “Fault lines have shifted. As they move, we move, which is why all manner of clash is left behind.

In the end, the absence of clash becomes as telling as clash itself. In 1977, the year Queen Elizabeth II celebrated twenty-five years on the British throne, the Sex Pistols—remember them?—marked the occasion with the release of their dumb, if nasty, punk anthem “God Save the Queen,” prompting what were still predictable clucks of outrage from defenders of the British institution.

Given these seemingly natural cultural enmities, a golden jubilee invite to, for example, drug-addled, bleep-mouthed Ozzy Osbourne—at the time riding reality-show-high—should have struck a culturally significant spark or two somewhere in the realm. But no. As the aged Keeper of the Stiff Upper Lip and retinue prepared to receive the aging Advocate of Wild Abandon and mates at her own gala affair, there was no discernible tut-tutting, not a single letter to the editor wondering what the country was coming to. In the end, no one noted anything amiss about an event that brought together a man who bites bats with a woman who has a royal taster.

Which goes to show the cultural revolution isn’t just over; it’s been forgotten entirely. This explains why, flashing forward to the 2004 Kennedy Center Honors in Washington, D.C., Billy Joel could celebrate Sir Elton John’s Lifetime Achievement Award by performing “The Bitch Is Back” for a black-tie crowd including President Bush, his White House cabinet, and a national television audience.

This was another transgressive moment of pomp and punkiness, a mix of cultivation and coarseness, but no one noticed the clash because there wasn’t any.”

Excerpt From: West, Diana. “The Death of the Grown-Up.”

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

211. HIRING PROCESS Any executive who starts out believing that he or she is a good judge of people is going to end up making the worst decisions. Medical educators say their greatest problem is the brilliant young physician who has a good eye. He has to learn not to depend on that alone but to go through the patient process of making a diagnosis; otherwise he kills people. An executive, too, has to learn not to depend on insight and knowledge of people but on a mundane, boring, and conscientious step-by-step process. Don’t hire people based on your instincts. Have a process in place to research and to test applicants thoroughly .”
Excerpt From: Peter F. Drucker. “The Daily Drucker.”
212. JESUS AS EDITOR “The worst chapter of your life does not have to be the last chapter if Jesus is your editor.” — Unknown
213. LOVE AND MARRIAGE “Have you ever wondered why when people get married, they promise to love each other until death? Think about it. Feelings change. You can’t promise to have a feeling. So if love is a feeling, the marriage vow makes no sense at all. But the vow does make sense because love is not a feeling. What is it, then? Love is a commitment of the will to the true good of another person. Of course, people who love each other usually do have strong feelings too, but you can have those feelings without having love. Love, let me repeat, is a commitment of the will to the true good of another person. Now the outward expression and seal of a commitment of the will is a binding promise. So the adult way to express love is to enter into a binding promise: marriage.”
Excerpt From: Budziszewski, J. “How to Stay Christian in College.”
214. LAWS AND MORALS “The Twenty-first Amendment repealed Prohibition in 1933, and alcohol sale and consumption went back to being local and state concerns. The debacle led millions of Evangelicals to drop out of politics for decades afterward. Prohibition reminds us of the dangers of using the federal government to enforce private morality. Still, our laws will always reflect, to some degree, our moral beliefs, our religious and cultural ideas.
At the same time, laws shape our morality. Scholars refer to this as the teaching function of law”
Excerpt From: James Robison & Jay W. Richards. “Indivisible.”
215. LIFE’S UNCERTAINTIES Four times in Ecclesiastes “11:1–6, Solomon reminds us of what we do not and cannot know:
• You do not know what evil will be on the earth.
• You do not know what is the way of the winds.
• You do not know the works of God.
• You do not know which will prosper.”
Excerpt From: Jeremiah, David. “Searching for Heaven on Earth.”
216. MAN’S PURPOSE “For many men, their primary mission in life is to build a successful career, provide for their families, and retire comfortably. That is what drives them, and that is the vision they pass on to their sons. But I think there is a much greater, nobler mission to pass on to boys.
Psalm 127: “Like arrows in the hand of a warrior, so are the children of one’s youth. How blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them” (verses 4–5).
This is powerful imagery. Think about what an arrow is created to do. Was it designed to stay in the quiver, comfortable and protected? No, it was made to be aimed and shot by a warrior at a target, to deliver a blow in battle.
Can you see the connection? Boys need to understand that they are not here on earth just to achieve worldly success and comfort. They’re here to strike a blow against evil, to make a mark on their world.”
Excerpt From: Rainey, Dennis. “Stepping Up.”
217. PROVIDENCE In 1937, Disney released the first full length animated motion picture, Snow White. The limited technology of the day required over 2 million individual detailed drawings be made with each one appearing a mere 1/24 of a second on screen. A movie goer could come and be impressed, but have no idea of the size and scope of the task which was required to bring the project to the viewing public.
The same can be considered when it comes to our Father in Heaven. We cannot imagine the scope and detail with which He provides for us throughout our lives “behind the scene.”
— Chris Seidman
218. MANHOOD “A man’s willingness to offer up his life for his wife or for anybody else who happens to need him is not the end of everything. It is only the end of himself. He who is fully a man has relinquished his right to himself.
— ELISABETH ELLIOT, “The Mark of a Man”
219. LIBERTY UNCHECKED “John Flavel made a penetrating observation over three hundred years ago, and it applies to our day:
Upon their king’s death, it was the Persians’ custom (I am not saying it was laudable) to grant everyone liberty for five days to do whatever they wanted.
The unbridled lust was so great that it made the people long and pray for the installment of the next king.
When everyone has unchecked liberty, all hell breaks loose. It’s called anarchy, and it is demonic. And there is nothing like unchecked liberty to make people long for a good king and good laws.
When you are the king of your own life, you give yourself permission to do anything you want—and that’s when all hell breaks loose.”
Excerpt From: Farrar, Steve. “Real Valor.”
220. LIFE “The key to life is not its length but its depth. It’s not how many days we live, but how we live our days.” — Jim Denison

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

201. CONSTANT LEARNING “Know that when you are through learning, you are through.”
Excerpt From: Wooden, John. “Wooden: A Lifetime of Observations and Reflections On and Off the Court.”
202. BEN FRANKLIN’S VIRTUES
“Ben Franklin’s 13 Virtues
1. Temperance: Eat not to dullness and drink not to elevation.
2. Silence: Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself. Avoid trifling
conversation.
3. Order: Let all your things have their places. Let each part of your business
have its time.
4. Resolution: Resolve to perform what you ought. Perform without fail what you
resolve.
5. Frugality: Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself: that is,
waste nothing.
6. Industry: Lose no time. Be always employed in something useful. Cut off all
unnecessary actions.
7. Sincerity: Use no hurtful deceit. Think innocently and justly; and, if you
speak, speak accordingly.
8. Justice: Wrong none, by doing injuries or omitting the benefits that are your
duty.
9. Moderation: Avoid extremes. Forbear resenting injuries so much as you think
they deserve.
10. Cleanliness: Tolerate no uncleanness in body, clothes, or habitation.
11. Chastity: Rarely use venery but for health or offspring; never to dullness,
weakness, or the injury of your own or another’s peace or reputation.
12. Tranquility: Be not disturbed at trifles, or at accidents common or
unavoidable.
13. Humility: Imitate Jesus.
Excerpt From: Jim Stovall & Tim Maurer. “The Ultimate Financial Plan.”
203. HOLOCAUST “We’ve all heard of the yellow triangles the Jews were forced to wear for identification. Do you know the other colors that were used? Brown triangles identified gypsies and those of Roman descent. Purple triangles were worn by Jehovah’s Witnesses, Catholic priests, and Christian leaders who ran afoul of the government. Purple badges. Red and pink and brown. Blue and black. All worn by mothers and fathers and children who were not the first to be selected for the camps. Their badges were worn—their fates altered—well after they got a good look at the yellow ones.”
Excerpt From: Andrews, Andy. “How Do You Kill 11 Million People?.”
204. BLOOD “A speck of blood the size of this letter “o” contains 5,000,000 red cells, 300,000 platelets and 7,000 white cells. The fluid is actually an ocean stocked with living matter. Red cells alone, if removed from a single person and laid side by side, would carpet an area of 3,500 square yards.” “After a person spends a few months in the rarefied atmosphere of Colorado’s mountains, up to ten million red cells will fill each drop of blood, compensating for the thinner air. The pell-mell journey, even to the extremity of the big toe, lasts a mere twenty
seconds. An average red cell endures the cycle of loading, unloading, and jostling through the body for a half million round trips over four months. In one final journey, to the spleen, the battered cell is stripped bare by scavenger cells and recycled into new cells. Three hundred billion such red cells die and are replaced every day, leaving behind various parts to reincarnate in a hair follicle or a taste bud.*”
“The brain, master of the body, can survive intact only five minutes without replenishment.”
Excerpt From: Yancey, Philip. “In His Image.”
205. REPUTATION “There is no lost and found that you can visit to get your reputation back. Don’t let go of it.”
Excerpt From: David Avrin & Joe Calloway. “It’s Not Who You Know — It’s Who Knows You!.”
206. LIFE CHANGES “At times I’m struck by how strange it is that the same person [me] who has gone through so many life changes over the years can believe in this God who is still the same because He never changes.”
Excerpt From: Goff, Bob. “Love Does.”
207. FUNERALS “More lies are told at funerals than at any other occasion. They are forced out as the silent deceptions of a man’s character are finally dealt with at his memorial service. People spend lifetimes covering or ignoring the truth of who they are. Friends and family, who spent their lives playing along with the deception while they were alive, stick to the beloved’s script in the end.
In the moment of a funeral, the description bears almost no similarity to the actual people memorialized. Mourners flip the funeral program over to make sure they’re in the right service. If we were half the people in life others will say we were at our funerals we might have lives that don’t require such edits. It’s  bizarre type of courtesy paid to the bereaved. [But] there’s nothing so powerful as a life that speaks for itself. A life that is its own benediction. A life that is a translation of integrity. More than once I’ve thanked the deceased publicly for not forcing me to make things up at the end of their lives. You can’t rewrite the endings anyway. You might ignore them out of civility, but you can’t fix them. The more consistent the life, the easier the funeral is to preach. The best funeral preaches itself.
Excerpt From: Byron Forrest Yawn. “What Every Man Wishes His Father Had Told Him.”
208. GOD’S POLITICAL PARTY? “We exist to serve God. He doesn’t exist to serve us. No country, no political party, and no political ideology can own Him. He’s the boss.”
Excerpt From: Budziszewski, J. “How to Stay Christian in College.”
209. INFLUENCE “In order to learn about influence we must leave the comfort of models, linear sequences, and step-by-step recipes. The magic of influence is less in what we say and more in how we say it and who we are.”
Excerpt From: Simmons, Annette. “The Story Factor.”
210. HUMILITY Benjamin Franklin once said, “To be humble to superiors is duty, to equals courtesy, and to inferiors nobleness.”

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

191. MUSIC, LOVE & SEX “Plato taught us to “mark the music” to understand an individual or his society. After all, people who hum Berlin or Arlen or Gershwin think they want to fall in love; people who hum (hum?) Mötley Crüe or the Ying Yang Twins think they want to have sex. People who listen to Mel Tormé (Nat Cole, Bing Crosby, or Ella Fitzgerald) don’t want to pierce their tongues; people who listen to Eminem (Alanis Morissette, Kurt Cobain, or Public Enemy) don’t want to pin on an orchid corsage. If the American popular song could idealize romantic love to a fault, rock ’n’ roll degrades physical couplings to new lows—destroying not just the language of love and romance, but also the meaning of love and romance. And, I would sadly add, our capacity to experience both. The fact is, between a world in which romantic love is the ideal and a world where nonmarital sex is the goal lies a vast cultural chasm. What we know as romantic love, which aspires to monogamous marriage, builds civilization up; what we know as free love, which aspires to a polymorphous sex life, keeps it down.”

Excerpt From: West, Diana. “The Death of the Grown-Up.”

192. PROPERTY RIGHTS IN BIBLE “According to the teachings of the Bible, government should both document and protect the ownership of private property in a nation. The Bible regularly assumes and reinforces a system in which property belongs to individuals, not to the government or to society as a whole. We see this implied in the Ten Commandments, for example, because the eighth commandment, “You shall not steal” (Exod. 20:15), assumes that human beings will own property that belongs to them individually and not to other people. “This assumption of private ownership of property, found in this fundamental moral code of the Bible, puts the Bible in direct opposition to the communist system advocated by Karl Marx. Marx said: “The theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: abolition of private property” [Karl Marx, Communist Manifesto, 1948).

One reason why communism is so incredibly dehumanizing is that when private property is abolished, government controls all economic activity. And when government controls all economic activity, it controls what you can buy, where you will live, and what job you will have (and therefore what job you are allowed to train for, and where you go to school), and how much you will earn. It essentially controls all of life, and human liberty is destroyed. Communism enslaves people and destroys human freedom of choice. The entire nation becomes one huge prison.”

Excerpt From: Farrar, Steve. “True Courage.”

193. LOVE “Oh, the comfort, the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person; having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but to pour them all out, just as they are, chaff and grain together, knowing that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and then, with a breath of kindness, blow the rest away.”

― George Eliot

194. FORGIVENESS “Toward the end of the Civil War, reparations were being discussed in the White House. Abraham Lincoln was told by one of his advisors who favored punishing the South, “Mr. President, you’re supposed to destroy your enemies, not make friends of them!” Mr. Lincoln replied, “Am I not destroying an enemy when I make a friend of him?”

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

195. HUMILITY “Humility is honestly assessing ourselves in light of God’s holiness and our sinfulness.” — CJ Mahaney

196. MAKE STRAIGHT A’s(?) “School is a place where A students [Professors] teach B students how to work for C students.”

Elite Daily, “The 10 Thing They Don’t Tell You At Graduation” May 7, 2013

197. LAWYERS “Mancur Olson used to argue that, over time, all political systems are likely to succumb to sclerosis, mainly because of rent-seeking activities by organized interest groups. Perhaps that is what we see at work in the United States today. Americans could once boast proudly that their system set the benchmark for the world; the United States was the rule of law. But now what we see is the rule of lawyers, which is something different. It is surely no coincidence that lawyers are so over-represented in the US Congress.”

From: Ferguson, Niall. “The Great Degeneration.”

198. FOOLS “A fool may talk, but a wise man speaks.”

—BEN JONSON

199. SPIRITUAL GROWTH “A Christian is not of hasty growth, like a mushroom, but rather like the oak, the progress of which is hardly perceptible, but in time becomes a great deep-rooted tree. — John Newton

200. FOOLS “Never argue with a fool. People might not know the difference.”

Excerpt From: Heinrichs, Jay. “Thank You For Arguing, Revised and Updated

 

 

 

 

 

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

181. “GENTLEMEN’S” CLUBS “The average “gentlemen’s club” is not actually for gentlemen. Instead, it is a Palace of Perpetual Adolescence where incomplete males go to get on the cheap what they don’t have the guts to fight for righteously and make their own.”

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

182. “BIG JOBS USUALLY GO TO THE MEN WHO PROVE THEIR ABILITY TO OUTGROW SMALL

ONES.”

—Theodore Roosevelt”

183. OMNISCIENCE “As a blind man has no idea of colors,” Newton wrote, “so have we no idea of the manner by which the all-wise God perceives and understands all things.”

Excerpt From: Dolnick, Edward. “The Clockwork Universe.”

184. TIMING “In the year 1600, for the crime of asserting that the Earth was one of an infinite number of planets, a man named Giordano Bruno was burned alive. Bruno, an Italian philosopher and mystic, had run afoul of the Inquisition. Charged with heresy, he was yanked from his prison cell, paraded through the streets of Rome, tied to a stake, and set afire. To ensure his silence in his last minutes, a metal spike had been driven through his tongue.

Almost exactly a century later, in 1705, the queen of England bestowed a knighthood on Isaac Newton. Among the achievements that won Newton universal admiration was this: he had convinced the world of the doctrine that had cost Giordano Bruno his life.”

Excerpt From: Dolnick, Edward. “The Clockwork Universe.”

185. AFRICAN PROVERB “When an old person dies, a library burns to the ground.”

186. ECONOMIC OUTCOMES “Democracy depends on equality, capitalism on inequality. Citizens in a democracy come to the public square with one vote each; participants in a capitalist economy arrive at the marketplace with unequal talents and resources and leave the marketplace with unequal rewards. Nor is inequality simply a side effect of capitalism. A capitalist economy can’t operate without it. The differing talents and resources of individuals are recruited and sorted by the differential rewards, which reinforce the original differences. Inequality drives the engine of capitalism…”

—H. W. Brands, in the Prologue to his book, American Colossus: The Triumph of

Capitalism 1865–1900

187. CHRISTIANITY “Christianity is not the sacrifice we make, but the sacrifice we trust.”

—P. T. FORSYTH”

188. CHOICES “There is a choice you have to make, in everything you do. And you must always keep in mind the choice you make, makes you.”

—ANONYMOUS

189. WHAT R U GONNA DO? “God decided to have us intersect history, not at just any time, but at this time. He made us to be good at a few things and bad at a couple others. He made us to love some things and not like others. Most of all, He made us to dream. We were meant to dream a lot. We’re not just a cosmic biology experiment that ended up working. We’re part of God’s much bigger plan for the whole world. Just like God’s Son arrived here, so did you. And after Jesus arrived, God whispered to all of humanity . . . “It’s your move.” Heaven’s been leaning over the rails in the same way ever since you got here, waiting to see what you’ll do with your life.”

Excerpt From: Goff, Bob. “Love Does.”

190. GROW UP! “More adults, ages eighteen to forty-nine, watch the Cartoon Network than watch CNN. Readers as old as twenty-five are buying “young adult” fiction written expressly for teens. The average video gamester was eighteen in 1990; now he’s going on thirty. And no wonder: The National Academy of Sciences has, in 2002, redefined adolescence as the period extending from the onset of puberty, around twelve, to age thirty. The MacArthur Foundation has gone farther still, funding a major research project that argues that the “transition to

adulthood” doesn’t end until age thirty-four. This long, drawn-out “transition” jibes perfectly with two British surveys showing that 27 percent of adult children striking out on their own return home to live at least once; and that 46 percent of adult couples regard their parents’ houses as their “real” homes. Over in Italy, nearly one in three thirty-somethings never leave that “real” home in the first place. Neither have 25 percent of American men, ages eighteen to thirty. Maybe this helps explain why about one-third of the fifty-six million Americans sitting down to watch SpongeBob SquarePants on Nickelodeon each month in 2002 were between the ages of eighteen and forty-nine.”

Excerpt From: West, Diana. “The Death of the Grown-Up.”