Insight for Today
A Daily Devotional by Pastor Chuck Swindoll

I CANNOT IMAGINE ANYTHING more boring and less desirable than being poured into the mold of predictability. Few things interest me less than the routine, the expected, the status quo.

YOUR MIND IS A MUSCLE. It needs to be stretched to stay sharp. It needs to be prodded and pushed to perform. Let it get idle and lazy on you, and that muscle will become a pitiful mass of flab in a brief period of time.

EVER FEEL WORN OUT BY the spinning of your wheels in the muck of sin? Are you fatigued from fighting the battle against your dark nature?

DAWSON TROTMAN, founder of the Navigators, an organization discipling and mentoring ministry leaders around the world, drowned while saving a swimmer from certain death.

PRACTICALLY SPEAKING, greed is an inordinate desire for more, an excessive, unsatisfied hunger to possess. Like an untamed beast, greed grasps, claws, reaches, clutches, and clings—stubbornly refusing to surrender.

PERHAPS YOU’RE FIGHTING an inner battle with a ghost from the past. The specter of a previous hurt haunts your mind and steals your peace.

ANY THIRD GRADER COULD have told you the vaunted sky cycle leap across the Snake River Canyon on that sultry Sunday afternoon was a triple-A flop—a classic fizzle.

THE RARE AND REMARKABLE VIRTUE OF patience is within the and-so-forth section in Galatians chapter 5. You know how we quote that passage . . . “the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, and-so-forth.”

TWO CONGREGATIONS OF differing denominations were located only a few blocks from each other in a small community. They thought it might be better if they would merge and become one united body.

THE FEELINGS ARE FAMILIAR. Mouth open. Eyes like saucers. Chill up the spine. “The flash of a mighty surprise” boggles the mind, leaving us somewhere between stunned and dumb with wonder.

MARCH 11, 1942, was a dark, desperate day at Corregidor. One island after another in the Pacific theater had been buffeted into submission.

We may find physical famine almost impossible to believe. But how about spiritual famine? You don’t need imagination for that!

HE WAS BRILLIANT. Clearly a child prodigy, the pride of Salzburg, a performer par excellence. One of the most brilliant and gifted composers of all time left earth at the young age of thirty-five.

NOTHING DAMAGES OUR DIGNITY LIKE STUMBLING! I have seen people dressed to the hilt stumble and fall flat on their faces as they were walking to church.

MY FRIEND ATE DOG FOOD ONE EVENING. He was at an elegant student reception in a physician’s home. The dog food was served on delicate crackers.

You remember Thomas Henry Huxley. Devoted disciple of Charles Darwin. Famous biologist, teacher, and author. Defender of the theory of evolution.

TEARS HAVE A LANGUAGE ALL THEIR OWN, needing no interpreter. In some mysterious way, our inner-communication system knows its verbal limitations, and the tears come.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN’S COFFIN WAS pried open on more than one occasion. Once in 1887, twenty-two years after his assassination. Why? It was not to determine if he had died of a bullet fired from John Wilkes Booth’s derringer.

WHEN GOD CALLS A SERVANT, there is little room for negotiation. The most striking example of this is when God spoke to Abram, lifting him from obscurity and setting him on a course that would change human history.

ARE YOU ATTRACTIVE? I’m not referring to external beauty nor facial features. I’m asking if you are personally attractive—magnetic, winsome, charming, friendly.