Insight for Today
A Daily Devotional by Pastor Chuck Swindoll

If I may select a well-known phrase from the cobwebs of the fourteenth century and wipe away the dust to garner your attention, it is: "COMPARISONS ARE ODIOUS." Odious . . . disgusting, detestable.

Hosea started a scandal in the parsonage. Why? Hold onto your hat—he married a prostitute. Talk about gossip! His name became a byword for "fool." Respect for him dropped to zero. His reputation was suddenly null and void.

The bitter news of Dawson Trotman's drowning swept like cold wind across Schroon Lake to the shoreline. Eyewitnesses tell of the profound anxiety, the tears, the helpless disbelief in the faces of those who now looked out across the deep blue water.

It is quite probable that someone reading my words this moment is fighting an inner battle with a ghost from the past. The skeleton in one of yesterday's closets is beginning to rattle louder and louder.

Snake River Canyon coiled up, rattled its tail, and sank its fangs into its would-be captor. On a sultry Sunday afternoon its l,700-foot jaws yawned wide as it swallowed a strange-tasting capsule prescribed for it.

Perhaps you've uttered the American's Prayer at some anxious moment recently: "Lord, give me patience . . . and I want it right now!" This rare and remarkable virtue is within the and-so-forth section in Galatians chapter 5.

Are you ready for a surprise? You blink twenty-five times every minute. Each blink takes you about one-fifth of a second. Therefore, if you take a ten-hour automobile trip, . . . you will drive twenty miles with your eyes closed.

Greece said . . . Be wise, know yourself. Rome said . . . Be strong, discipline yourself. Judaism says . . . Be holy, conform yourself. Epicureanism says . . . Be sensuous, enjoy yourself.

The feelings are familiar. Mouth open. Eyes like saucers. Chill up the spine. Heart pounding in the throat. Momentary disbelief. We frown and attempt to piece the story together without a script or narrator.

March 11, 1942, was a dark, desperate day at Corregidor. The Pacific theater of war was threatening and bleak. One island after another had been buffeted into submission. The enemy was now marching into the Philippines.

My first rude awakening to the reality of hunger occurred early in 1958 when our troop ship full of U.S. Marines pulled into the harbor of Yokohama, Japan. We were so thrilled to see land, having been at sea for seventeen days.

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. I have witnessed serious and gifted soloists . . . stumble and fall.

There's this tree in my front yard that gives me fits several times a year. It leans. No, it never breaks or stops growing . . . it just leans. It's attractive, deep green, nicely shaped, and annually bears fragrant blossoms.

On the day Jesus was crucified, a sinister darkness blotted out the sun and smothered Jerusalem under a blanket of evil. It would have appeared to anyone seeing through eyes of flesh that the darkness, the devil, and death had defeated the Son of God once and for all.

On the once bloody battlefield at Saratoga there stands a towering obelisk. A 155-foot-high monument commemorative of that decisive struggle where the British made their last stand over two centuries ago.

"There lies the most perfect ruler of men the world has ever seen . . . [and] now he belongs to the ages." Of whom was this said? One of the Caesars? No. Napoleon? No. Alexander the Great? No. Eisenhower? Patton?

When words fail, tears flow. Tears have a language all their own, a tongue that needs no interpreter. In some mysterious way, our complex inner-communication system knows when to admit its verbal limitations . . . and the tears come.

Nine-year-old Danny came bursting out of Sunday school like a wild stallion. His eyes were darting in every direction as he tried to locate either his mom or dad. Finally, after a quick search, he grabbed his daddy by the leg.

A friend of mine ate dog food one evening. No, he wasn't at a fraternity initiation or a hobo party . . . he was actually at an elegant student reception in a physician's home near Miami.

Two hours away from our own front door we traveled completely around the world. We didn't miss a continent. From Paraguay to the Congo. From the Serengeti Plains of Tanzania into the tropical rain forests of Malagasy . . .