Insight for Today
A Daily Devotional by Pastor Chuck Swindoll

I’M PASSIONATE ABOUT TIME MANAGEMENT. I want efficiency and effectiveness. In fact, a weakness of mine is books on the investment of my time.

TO ME, BIRTHDAYS ARE JUST another routine realization that I'm not getting any younger. I know that because the cake won't hold all the candles.

ON THAT ICY JANUARY MORNING, in a twenty-five-cent-a-night flophouse, a shell of a man who looked twice his age staggered to the washbasin and fell. The basin toppled and shattered.

GROWING OLD, LIKE TAXES, is a fact we all must face. Now, you’re not going to get me to declare when growing up stops and growing old starts.

LEONARD WAS A PARAGON OF RESPECTABILITY. The middle-aged, hardworking lab technician had worked at the same Pennsylvania paper mill for nineteen years.

THE LONGER I LIVE THE LESS I know with absolute certainty. In my younger years, I viewed most things as either black or white.

THERE'S NOTHING MORE DISTASTEFUL than someone who is set on self-glossing—offering his résumé and list of achievements unsolicited to everyone in the room.

IF YOU FOUND YOURSELF near the end of your days, close to death, who or what would you most want by your side? That’s a compelling question, isn’t it?

MY HIGH SCHOOL GRADUATING CLASS had its thirtieth anniversary reunion many summers ago. Since I could not attend, I decided to blow the dust off my yearbook and stroll down nostalgia lane.

EIGHT WORDS WERE BRASHLY SMEARED across the dashboard of the speedboat tied up at Gulf Shores, Alabama. They reflected the flash and flair of its owner whose fast life was often publicized in sporting news across America.

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.