Insight for Today
A Daily Devotional by Pastor Chuck Swindoll

From a distance we in the church often look like beautiful people. We're well-dressed. We have nice smiles. We look friendly. We appear cultured, under control . . . at peace.

Fresh-fallen snow blanketed the range of mountains on the northeast rim of the Los Angeles basin. When I caught my first glimpse of it in the distance, I found myself smiling and saying aloud, "Beautiful!"

Let me give you three very practical thoughts regarding this matter of God's strength through stress, as found in Psalm 46. First, His strength is immediately available. Our trials are not superficial or irrelevant.

Who would've ever guessed it? Out of the blue came this nobody. He had spent his youth working for his dad in the quiet, rugged outdoors. Now, suddenly, he was the most famous man in the country.

Having just held a memorial service for a friend several years younger than I who had died with liver cancer, I have been thinking about how to respond when struck by an arrow of affliction.

Flying ace Chuck Yeager has written a book with an inviting title: Press On! A guy with his adventurous background, plus a chest full of medals to prove it, probably has a lot to say about "pressing on."

The Book of Job drips with mystery. The sobs of the man and the silence of his God form a strange combination. From the start, there are surprises and anomalies.

Victory is not a once-for-all, automatic inheritance. Christians need to be reminded that the life God provides—the abundant life—is not a continuous, unbroken chain of victories. Victory is available, but not automatic.

Whoever is soft on depravity should see Schindler's List. It's not for the fainthearted, I warn you. It is a raw, harsh, shocking exposé of unbridled prejudice, the kind of anti-Semitic prejudice spawned in hellish hate.

I don't know anyone who would build a summer home at the base of Mount Vesuvius, and it would be tough trying to get campers to pitch their tents where Big Foot had been spotted.

Sometimes fundamentalists can be the ugly ducklings of Christendom. We sometimes clothe the infinite riches of Christ in unattractive rags! As a result, the treasure of Truth is tainted and cheapened by the way it is presented to the public.

In our overpopulated, impersonal world, it is easy to underestimate the significance of one. With so many people, most of whom seem so much more capable, more gifted . . . than I, who am I to think my part amounts to much?

Paul jumped all over the Galatians for allowing a handful of legalistic Judaizers to invade their lives and clip their wings. Remember his rebuke? "It was for freedom that Christ set us free; therefore keep standing firm . . ."

Tucked away in the folds of Hebrews 11 is a two-word biography worth a second glance: "he endured" (11:27). The "he" refers to Moses. Moses was the one who hung tough, who refused to give in or give up.

After a lengthy bout with despair, severe depression, and suicide attempts, writer and poet William Cowper (1731–1800) discovered comfort in God's providence, which led him to write "Shining out of Darkness."

I've been giving a lot of thought these days to the subject of God's will. While engaged in a study of that issue recently, I came across a term we rarely use or read these days: providence.

As one understanding soul expressed it: "Compassion is not a snob gone slumming. It's a real trip down inside the broken heart of a friend. It's feeling the sob of the soul. It's sitting down and silently weeping with your soul-crushed neighbor."

For over an hour the other day I strolled down Nostalgia Lane with a September 4, 1939, copy of Time magazine. What a journey! Pickups sold for $465 and best-selling books cost $2.

An old year has completed its course. A new year is smiling at us with twelve months of the unknown. An entire ocean of possibilities, including both sun-drenched days and a few storms . . . stretch out across the uncharted waters.

We have reached the end of another year and now face a new one. When we stood in this same spot 364 days ago, we looked ahead to what the Lord was going to teach us in the coming year.