Forty-plus years ago, my mom and I traveled to Europe together several times, she being a new widow and I being a footloose and fancy-free 20-something. She and I had unforgettably beautiful times traveling from London to Venice, with lengthy stays in such wonderlands as Rothenburg, Salzburg and Vienna.
 
It wasn’t all sunshine, however. Although my mother was a soft-hearted Christian, I was a hard-headed feminist atheist. So of course everything had to go according to my wishes and my plans. Pity the poor soul who dared to cross me.
 
Which means my memories of our travels are pockmarked with a number of now-cringe-worthy moments.
 
I remember in particular an incident when we were disembarking from a TEE train in Salzburg, as I struggled to unload our two back-breakingly heavy suitcases.  A very pleasant Austrian man offered to help me.
 
“No thank you,” I said icily, practically knocking him down in my outrage.  Couldn’t he see that I was perfectly capable of managing on my own? How dare he assume that I needed his assistance? I am woman, hear me roar!
 
“Why didn’t you accept that nice man’s help?” my mother asked a little later, as we wheeled our bags along the walk to the nearby Goldener Loewe hotel. (Suitcases didn’t come with wheels yet, but some enterprising business had just come out with those portable wheelie thingies that you strapped on to the bags. Sheer genius.)
 
“Why?” I practically hissed. How could she not see it? “Because I obviously didn’t need his help, that's why.”
 
“Sometimes,” she said, “a lady accepts help even when she doesn’t need it, to let others be a blessing to her.”
 
“I’m hardly a lady,” I scoffed, totally missing the point of her advice but successfully silencing her.
 
I was thinking about that incident recently, after having a conversation with a physically disabled friend who was lamenting her total dependence on others. “If only I could walk again, I’d be less of a burden to everyone,” she said wistfully. “I’d actually be able to help others again.”
 
“Sometimes,” I replied, “we need to allow others to be a blessing to us. And in your case, you are doing that daily.”
 
She thought about it, and agreed, and praised the Lord that He was giving her this opportunity to give others this particular blessing.
 
It took me a few hours to realize how I’d managed to come up with this brilliant observation. But realize, I did: It was simply a paraphrasing of my mother’s advice, delivered four decades ago outside of a train station in Austria.
 
Why do so many of us have such a hard time accepting help?
 
I suppose part of the problem is our pride; we don’t want to admit that we have any weaknesses requiring assistance.

But there must be more to it than that.
 
“Well,” you might remind me, “Jesus Himself said that it is more blessed to give than to receive.” (Acts 20:35)
 
Ah. So we want to keep that blessing for ourselves? Even if it means denying it to others?
 
Of course not. But sadly, we don't always dig deep enough to see the results of our thought and actions.
 
Just think how would-be helpers must feel when we refuse their assistance, especially when they’d be going to some trouble or expense to provide it.
 
I thought about it, and mourned all the times I’d robbed others of the blessing of giving.
 
Which made me think about how God must feel when we reject His gift of salvation (Ephesians 2:8-9). After all, He bought that gift for us on the cross “for the joy that was set before Him” (Hebrews 12:2).  When we reject His gift, we are robbing Him of joy that He died to obtain.
 
Or how about this: What if we let others help us, and then insist on paying them for their efforts? Say, for instance, that I’d accepted the Austrian gentleman’s help with our suitcases, and had then slipped him a generous tip. Would he have been unhappy? Insulted, perhaps?
 
How do you suppose the Lord must feel when we accept His gift of salvation and then attempt to reimburse Him in a currency of good works, sacraments and sacrificial service to others? Are we not insulting the Giver?
 
I don’t know about you. But if the Lord sends me down the road into old age, I’m going to make a point of letting people help me. It won’t be easy for this still-recovering feminist. But my mother said that a lady accepts help even when she doesn’t need it, to let others be a blessing to her. And as it turns out, my mother was right about everything; somehow, she even knew that I would one day be divinely transformed into the semblance of a lady.

Today, I’m pleased to share with you a post from my friend Ron Whited, who blogs at ronwhited.wordpress.com. I hope you’ll visit him soon! (The painting above is from a fresco uncovered in the ruins of Pompeii, and so produced before A.D. 79.)

In today’s society, we don’t hear the words servant or master very often. In fact, just hearing the words conjures up images in our minds that we would just as soon not think about.
 
America is a relatively young nation, and it was not all that long ago that the words servant (or slave) and master were a part of an everyday life that nearly destroyed this nation. So, it is easy to understand why we have an aversion to these words.
 
In the Bible however, the words servant shows up 885 times in the KJV Bible (741 OT/144 NT), while the word master appears 184 times (100 OT/84 NT).
 
Obviously, it was common practice in those days for there to exist several different classes, or levels of people in society, and the lines between servant and master were clearly drawn.
 
In his Matthew 24 discourse, Jesus used this class distinction between servant and master when explaining to his disciples the conditions that would exist just prior to his second coming. He knew, of course, that his audience at the time would clearly understand his references.
 
45 “Who then is a faithful and wise servant, whom his master made ruler over his household, to give them food in due season?
 
46 Blessed is that servant whom his master, when he comes, will find so doing.
 
47 Assuredly, I say to you that he will make him ruler over all his goods.
 
 48 But if that evil servant says in his heart, ‘My master is delaying his coming,’
 
49 and begins to beat his fellow servants, and to eat and drink with the drunkards,
 
50 the master of that servant will come on a day when he is not looking for him and at an hour that he is not aware of,
 
51 and will cut him in two and appoint him his portion with the hypocrites. There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.        
(Matthew 24:45-51)
 
Jesus is warning all to be on guard and not to become like the servant who lost sight of the fact that his master was indeed going to come again. Jesus refers to this type of servant as “evil” because he has become like the world around him, mistreating others and partaking of things that drove him even further away from his master.
 
On the other hand, Jesus refers to the “faithful” servant as one who is busy doing the will of his master. This servant has not forgotten that his master is coming again and is working diligently to faithfully fulfill his charge.
 
All of this points to us today who are living in the hour where we are witnessing the beginnings of the “falling away”, spoken of by the Apostle Paul in 2 Thess. 2:3.
 
The hearts of many are becoming cold, just as Jesus said they would in Matt. 24:12. We hardly need to be reminded of this fact by scripture, but it was prophesied nonetheless.
 
From where I sit on the front row, it would seem that we are fast approaching the time when we will once and for all have to make the decision to either be counted as faithful, or to join the ranks of those already fallen away into unbelief.
 
One thing is for certain, the day is at hand where straddling the fence between the two will no longer be an option.
 
My prayer is that all who will read this will take the attitude of Joshua, who said “as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord” (Joshua 24:15).
 
Be blessed,
Ron
ronwhited.wordpress.com

Sometimes I think that all it would take for worldwide conversion to Christianity is a true and widespread telling of the history of the Bible -- complete with accounts of its supernatural preservation, and of the men and women who, over the centuries, were martyred for their efforts to put it in our hands. (Pictured above: William Tyndale, strangled and burned at the stake for translating the Bible into English; his last words were reportedly "Lord, open the eyes of the King of England" -- a prayer that was answered, just 75 years later, with the publication of the King James Bible.)  

I'm happy to report that this true and widespread telling is freely and irresistibly available to anyone with the heart to hear it. The vehicle: the riveting documentary The Indestructible Book. Narrated by the late Dr. Ken Connolly, author of a five-star companion book by the same title, this video makes a persuasive case for the Bible's divine origins based simply on its phenomenal history. 

You can watch the entire documentary on youtube, right here. Make yourself comfortable and prepare to be amazed. 

Have you ever you ignored a favorite garment’s care instructions?

I’ve done it many times over the decades. Sometimes it works out just fine, saving me a small fortune in dry cleaning fees. But more often than not, the results have been immediate ruin – once-elegant pants reduced to high-waders, sweaters resized for a kindergartener, knits unblocked and misshapen, once-vibrant blouses faded and blotchy. 

And then there was my polka-dot Liz Claiborne dress.

I found this dress at a designer discount store back in the day when Liz was high-priced high-fashion. It was a sleek, short-sleeved, cream-colored linen sheath with big black polka dots, and it was my go-to dress whenever I needed to look my tailored best. 

Its only flaw was found inside, on the tag proclaiming “DRY CLEAN ONLY!” I couldn’t really afford it, but I loved this dress; and so dry clean it I did, year after expensive year, even as the cost outpaced both inflation and my earnings.  

But one day, riding on my success in hand-washing a couple of dry-clean-only silk blouses, I decided that I’d had enough. Surely my polka-dot dress would thrive in careful hands, oh-so-gentle Woolite, and delicate air-drying on a padded hanger. Surely Liz Claiborne had inserted the alarming “DRY CLEAN ONLY!” warning only as a sop to a faithful fashion-industry colleague. Surely I could get away with breaking this one little rule; it really was too much to ask.

To cut to the chase: I was wrong. My good intentions and careful handling were useless: Every last polka dot bled into the surrounding cream, leaving ugly rivers of black and purple and red. And unlike the original dots, the rivers were apparently permanent; there was no scrubbing them clean.   

The dress was, in short, ruined. And here I am, 25 years later, still mourning its loss. 

I did learn one immediate lesson: when something of value is concerned, it’s best to heed its manufacturer’s instructions. 

But I only recently realized that this lesson applies equally well to the big picture: If we value our lives, it’s always best to follow our Manufacturer’s care instructions, packaged in one handy volume called the Bible. Some say “Bible” is an acronym for Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth, with good reason: In its pages, God tells us all we really need to know in fewer words than it took Ayn Rand to define a relatively simple political philosophy.  

Just as with a “dry clean only” tag, we ignore the Bible’s instructions at our own peril. They are the only way to true peace and joy even in the face of the worst calamities imaginable. In fact, this life isn’t meant to work apart from understanding and obeying its instructions.

Even more important, the Bible defines our eternities. It tells us how to be reconciled with our Creator forevermore, and warns us of the dire consequences of dying without having done so. 

If you haven’t yet studied God’s care instructions for your life, now would be a very good time to dig in. The consequences of ignoring them are infinitely worse than ruining a favorite dress.