Insight for Today
A Daily Devotional by Pastor Chuck Swindoll

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.

NINE-YEAR-OLD DANNY BURST OUT OF Sunday school, eyes darting in every direction trying to locate his mom or dad. After a quick search, he grabbed his daddy by the leg.

IT IS ALMOST 10:00, MONDAY NIGHT. The children are snoozing upstairs. Aside from a few outside noises—a passing car . . . a barking dog . . . a few, faint voices in the distance—all’s quiet on the home front.

HOW OFTEN HAVE YOU HEARD someone say, “Are you listening to me?” Let’s be honest: in a culture awash in cell phones, social media, and other addictive technologies, we’re losing the fine art of listening.

I HAVE JUST TAKEN MY Webster’s Dictionary off the shelf and looked up thorough. It means, “carried through to completion, careful about detail, complete in all respects.”

“WHAT DO YOU WANT TO be when you grow up?” The answers we receive are all over the map. One youngster recently told me he wanted to be either a car mechanic or a garbage collector.

IS IT POSSIBLE TO THINK SO much like Christ that our minds operate on a different plane than those of others around us? Not only is it possible—it’s essential!

DO YOU REALIZE THE POWER OF humanistic reasoning to block the power of Scripture? Let me be specific.

WHEN COMPARING THE ACTS OF forgiving and forgetting, I believe forgetting is the tougher assignment. Why? Because forgetting is something that is shared with no other person.

In comparison to Jesus Christ and all the things He has made possible—His forgiveness, His love, His righteousness—everything else we may be or accomplish diminishes in significance.

COULD WE REVISIT those words Paul wrote? “I have not achieved it . . . forgetting the past . . . looking forward to what lies ahead.” Paul's openness is best described with one word: vulnerability.

THOSE WHO REFUSE to get bogged down in and anchored to the past are those who pursue the objectives of the future. People who do this are never petty.

TRUTH BE TOLD, it’s God’s forgiveness of us that makes it possible for us to forgive others. Jesus Christ paid in full the penalty for our sin.