KneEmail - a devotional by Mike Benson associated with Forthright Magazine
Kneemail - Character
WHEN THE X-RAY comes back and it doesn't look good, remember...God is still faithful... When you read that heart-breaking note from your mate, remember...God is still faithful. When you hear the worst kind of news about one of your...
IN HER BOOK The Key to a Loving Heart, Karen Mains has parable entitled "The Brawling Bride..." The parable describes a climatic moment in a wedding ceremony. Both families have been seated. The grooms and his attendants are in...
DURING WORLD WAR II, Nazi Germany dropped pornographic pamphlets from the sky over enemy territory... The reason; to distract the soldiers minds with fascinations causing them to ignore the front line. This has been the strategy of porn from...
AMY CARMICHAEL HAS a note in her little book If... "A cup brimful of sweet water cannot spill even one drop of bitter water, however suddenly jolted." If it is full of sweet water and is jolted, what will...
IN A SERIES of very difficult technical reviews conducted in a foreign country, the company representatives with whom I was meeting became extremely upset about the products from my company... I had a translator for the meeting, hired from...
WHAT IF SOMEONE knocked on your door today and asked, "Could I sell you some misery today...? What have all kinds for sale." Would you buy it? Of course not, but many of us, including me, have "bought" it...
THERE IS A certain convict that I have been corresponding with for several years down in Texas that recently got a "new" typewriter... He had completely worn out the old one. It was not very easy to correct his...
IN HIS BOOK The Making of a Leader, Robert Clinton states that "conflict is a powerful tool in the hand of God and can be used to teach a leader lessons that he would not learn in any other...
VICTOR FRANKL COULD have been forgiven if he had displayed a bad attitude... As a prisoner in a Nazi concentration camp, he was witness to some of the most indescribable horrors in human history. How, then, did Frankl avoid the...
THE WORST DEFEAT in a college football game came on October 7, 1916, when Georgia Tech played Cumberland College of Tennessee... The final score was 222 to 0. The much smaller Cumberland players were mauled. Cumberland had discontinued its football...
WHICH OF US is not guilty of cutting other people down just for the laughs...? We enjoy our biting sarcasm and our abilities to ridicule, our stinging quips, our sharp put-downs. The best humor, of course, is joking at our...
THE STORY IS told of a father who took his two boys one afternoon to play miniature golf... The father walked up to the man at the ticket counter and said, "How much is it to get in?" The young...
HAD IT NOT been for a confident and encouraging wife, Sofia, we might not have listed among the great names of literature the name of Nathaniel Hawthorne... When Nathaniel, a heartbroken man, went home to tell his wife he was...
AS A MAN Thinketh by James Allen is arguably the best non-inspired book ever written on the power of thought... Allen compared the mind to a garden and its owner to a master gardener. A good character is not the...
GENERAL GEORGE PATTON argued, "Success is measured by how high you bounce when you've hit bottom..." Simon Peter is a perfect illustration of this truth. He forsook his Lord and Friend in the garden. He even denied that he knew...
A CALIFORNIA SCHOOL system refuses to say what action, if any, it will take after it received complaints about a kindergarten teacher who encouraged her students to sign "pledge cards" in support of homosexuals... During a celebration of National Ally...
RELATIVISTS OFTEN CONFUSE the changing behavioral situation with the unchanging moral duty... For example, when discussing a moral topic like premarital sex or cohabitation, you often hear people in support of it say something like, "Get with it, this is...
So many celebrities have died recently, it reminds one of the death, in 1715, of King Louis XIV of France, after a reign of 72 years. He had called himself "the Great." The monarch had made the infamous statement, "I...
IT LOOKED AS if the rain would never stop... The clouds were laden and heavy. The thunder rumbled across the sky, and there was even an occasional flash of lightning. The day was gloomy enough, but the funeral that I...
"YOU'LL HAVE A hard time topping him...!" This was the comment made by a well-intentioned Christian lady to the next speaker on the lectureship. He responded to this sister, "I don't want to top him. We're on the same side."...
THREE PEOPLE WERE visiting the Grand Canyon -- a painter, a preacher, and a cowboy... Looking over the massive canyon, each one verbalized his observation: "Incredible!" the painter said. "I'd love to paint a picture of this!" The preacher waved...
FOR THE FIRST time in her life, Western Oregon University's Sara Tucholsky not only hit a home run in a game against Central Washington University, but she hit it over the fence... She had passed first base and was on...
THE BLOG TITLE read, "Moron turns in $140,000.00..." The title refers tot he news story that broke last month. Eli Estrada, a 40-year-old Palm Beach resident found a bag containing $140,000 in unmarked $20 bills. Mr. Estrada certainly could have...
IN 490 BC, THE Persians landed at a place called Marathon with the hope of capturing Athens... Greatly outnumbered, the Athenians dispatched Pheidippides to Sparta for help. Pheidippides is reported to have run one hundred and fifty miles in two...
THEODORE ROOSEVELT'S CHILD once jabbed, "Father always had to be the center of attention... When he went to a wedding, he wanted to be the bride. When he went to a funeral, he was sorry that he couldn't be the...
LAST YEAR WHILE hiking in the mountains of North Georgia, I came across a very large unusually shaped brick... The brick was almost completely covered in green, fur-like vegetation. After I scraped the green goop away, I carefully inspected the...
ONE AUTHOR TELLS the story of the world's most unwanted ship, the Pelicano... No country in the world wanted her. No country allowed her to land. She was a seaworthy ship and had reputable owners. The problem was that she...
WHY DOES A person enter military service...? Some want to travel and see the world. Others are thrill seekers who find the adventure (and danger) exhilarating. Quite a few choose a career in the service for financial rewards (college tuition,...
SOMETIMES IT'S HARD to sell people on the value of integrity... From all outward appearances, it doesn't "pay" to be honest. There were certainly times in the life of Joseph when he must have been tempted to say, "What good...
THE TAX COLLECTORS of Jesus' time were some of the most despised people in the land, considered untrustworthy, cheats, and traitors... Yet it was Levi (Matthew) whom Jesus called to follow Him. This brave man arose from his tax office...
WHENEVER YOU FIND yourself going through times of testing, there is always a reason...a very good reason... In fact, there are several reasons. Testing times are to: UNCOVER something: When God allows pressures and trials, it is so that you...
"...THE BEST WAY to manage conflict is to treat it as something normal and bring it out into the open where it can be handled fairly and constructively... Fighting openly keeps conflict from festering in insidious ways and gives those...
HAVE YOU EVER had someone pressure you into doing something you didn't want to do...? "Come on, it'll be fun. Just tell your parents you're spending the night at my house, and I'll tell my parents I'm spending the night...
AN EYEWITNESS ACCOUNT account of Union General John Sedgwick's death on May 9, 1864, told by his chief of staff, describes clearly the danger of overconfidence.... It seems that the previous evening, at one place on the battlefield, several officers...
THE BIBLE DOES describe the physical appearance of many people... Moses was said to be a beautiful child. People spoke of King Saul as being handsome, standing a head taller than anyone in Israel. David and Solomon were both "ruddy,"...
IN ANGOLA, WOMEN had an opportunity to enter a very different kind of beauty pageant... Contestants had to have been injured by land mines. In that African country, 80,000 people are amputees because of land mines, so it wasn't a...
I REMEMBER WALKING down the hallway and nervously waiting in the lobby of the downstairs Bible office at Freed-Hardeman University... I had an appointment for my first meeting with the upper-division Bible counselor, Dowell Flatt. Our first personal meeting...
GEORGE O. WOOD writes that on October 31, 1983, Korean Airlines flight 007 departed from Anchhorage, Alaska for a direct flight to Seoul, Korea... Unknown to the crew, however, the computer engaging the flight navigation system contained a one-and-a-half-degree routing...
I HEARD THE screams long before I could see him, but as I wheeled my grocery cart around to the next aisle of the store, there he was... With angry tears streaming out of squinty eyes, the little boy was...
TIS THE SEASON to receive catalogs in the mail.... Every trip to the mailbox ends with an armload of slick holiday catalogs. Each one claims to offer me something I need--immediately. "Don't wait!" "Limited offer!" "Order now!" The lure works....
A CHICAGO BANK once asked for a letter of recommendation on a young Bostonian being considered for employment... The Boston investment house could not say enough about the young man. His father, they wrote, was a Cabot; his mother was...
PETER CARTWRIGHT, A nineteenth-century, circuit-riding preacher, was an uncompromising man... One Sunday morning when he was to preach, we was told that President Andrew Jackson was in the congregation. Cartwright was warned not to say anything out of line. When...
IT WAS A 99 degree September day in San Antonio, when a 10-month-old baby girl was accidently locked inside a parked car by her aunt... Frantically the mother and aunt ran around the auto in near hysteria, while a neighbor...
WHO HASN'T DREAMED of hitting the jackpot and buying a new car and taking the vacation of a lifetime...? Not all that long ago, Nevada was the only place you could legally play the slots or poker, and New Hampshire...
ANCIENT WRESTLING MATCHES weren't for the squeamish or timid... Hoping to see some clean takedowns, reversals, and figure-four leg locks? Better look elsewhere. During the time of the Roman Empire, little things like kicking, biting, and scratching were perfectly acceptable...
DURING THE EIGHTEENTH century, no skeptic delighted in finding humor at the expense of the Bible (and Christianity in general) more than Francois-Marie Arouet, better known as Voltaire... His rejection of a personal God -- of God as Father --...
OUR FLIGHT TO Singapore was delayed because of mechanical problems... The 15-minute delay turned into 30 minutes, then 60 -- and then 3 hours. The ground staff was scrambling to calm the crowd, but people were tired and soon became...
THE CHRISTIAN'S LIFE is a manual, revealing what a Christian talks and acts like (Matt. 5:16)... It is a cookbook, showing the necessary ingredients which combine for a rich, full life (2 Pet. 1:5-11). It is a code book, the...
A BAGGAGE HANDLER removing the luggage from the Sao Paulo-Rio flight picked up a passenger's pet carrier -- and saw the dog was dead... He quickly called his superior, who, recognizing the situation was ripe for a legal suit, paged...