Posts by Jim Word

The pickle jar as far back as I can remember sat on the floor beside the dresser in my parents’ bedroom. When he got ready for bed, Dad would empty his pockets and toss his coins into the jar. As a small boy I was always fascinated at the sounds the coins made as they…

A riddle is making the rounds through e-mail. You may have already seen it, but if you haven’t, I think you’ll enjoy it. It is said that when asked this riddle, 80% of kindergarten students got the answer, compared to 17% of Stanford university seniors. Here’s the riddle: What is greater than God, more evil…

Ebenezer Erskine, a devoted Scottish preacher, who died in 1754, was visited on his deathbed by a friend, who asked him, “What are you doing now with your soul, Mr. Erskine?” to which the dying man replied, “I am doing with it what I did forty years ago, resting it on the Word of the…

The story of “Wrong Way Riegels” is a familiar one, but it bears repeating. On New Year’s Day, 1929, Georgia Tech played UCLA in the Rose Bowl. In that game a young man named Roy Riegels recovered a fumble for UCLA. Picking up the loose ball, he lost his direction and ran sixty-five yards toward…

In May 1995, Randy Reid, a 34-year-old construction worker, was welding on top of a nearly completed water tower outside Chicago. According to writer Melissa Ramsdell, Reid unhooked his safety gear to reach for some pipes when a metal cage slipped and bumped the scaffolding on which he stood. The scaffolding tipped, and Reid lost…

This story illustrates the difference between quality of life and the greed of life. May God help us to follow the lowly Nazarene. Jesus and Alexander died at thirty-three, one died in Babylon; and one on Calvary. Onegained all for self: and one himself He gave. One conquered every throne: the other every grave. The…

During one of the busiest times at Houston’s Hobby Airport, a flight was delayed due to a mechanical problem. Since they needed the gate for another flight, the aircraft was backed away from the gate while the maintenance crew worked on it. The passengers were then told the new gate number, which was some distance…

Leonardo da Vinci painted the fresco “The Last Supper” in a church in Milan. A very interesting story is associated with this painting. At the time that Leonardo da Vinci painted “The Last Supper,” he had an enemy who was a fellow painter. Da Vinci had had a bitter argument with this man and despised…

According to the Associated Press, in September 1994 Cindy Hartman of Conway, Arkansas, walked into her house to answer the phone and was confronted by a burglar. He ripped the phone cord out of the wall and ordered her into a closet. Hartman dropped to her knees and asked the burglar if she could pray…

In One Inch from the Fence, Wes Seeliger writes: I have spent long hours in the intensive care waiting room… watching with anguished people… listening to urgent questions: Will my husband make it? Will my child walk again? How do you live without your companion of thirty years? The intensive care waiting room is different…