Remember Mt. St Helens

In their book, The Truth Behind Left Behind, Mark Hitchcock and Thomas Ice wrote about the morning of May 18, 1980, when Mount Saint Helens in S.W. Washington, "exploded with the force of thirty thousand atomic bombs, sending super-sonic concussive waves that flattened everything within 150 square miles. On the heels of that wave, a fifty-foot wall of mud and ash screamed down the mountain and into the surrounding forest land, burying everything in its path and changing the landscape forever."

Harry Truman, the eighty-three-year-old caretaker of a lodge on Spirit Lake at the foot of Mount Saint Helens, knew all about the multiple seismographic evidence that warned of a pending massive explosion. Harry claimed that he knew more about this mountain than anybody else. He ignored the endless earthquakes in the preceding two months, the hundreds of steam blast explosions, and the massive eighty-meter bulge on the mountain side.

He claimed it wouldn't dare blow up on him. But it did. Harry, along with all others who ignored the warning signs, was buried under 600 feet of volcanic ash and material.

Make absolute sure that you are not like Harry Truman who disregarded all of nature's warnings about the pending doom, and ignore God's repeated warnings.

Dear God ..
thank You ..
that you have warned me ..
time and again ..
to be ready ..

I believe ..
and I ask ..
for Your forgiveness ..
for all my sins ..

Thank You for hearing and answering my prayer ..

.. amen ..

Dreams: God's Forgotten Language?

Dreams not only give valuable personal insights but also have given many creative insights. Some inventors, for example, have received profound ideas from dreams. I recall reading how the inventor, Elias Howe, designed the first sewing machine. He was having great difficulty in conceiving a workable needle. When he was close to running out of money, he had an unusual dream. He dreamt that he was about to be executed because he failed to design a sewing machine for the king of a strange country.

In his dream he was surrounded by guards, all of whom held spears that had been pierced with holes near the tip. Howe woke up and immediately rushed to his workshop. The perfect concept for the sewing machine needle came to him in this dream. Within a few hours the first sewing machine design was well on the way to being completed.

I have heard it said that the theory of relativity came to Einstein in either a dream or a vision. Apparently he saw it on a beam of light. I have also read that the design for the first radio tube came to the inventor in a dream.

Was it time for these discoveries to come into the world and did God give them to the persons who were trained to understand them and put them to use? Or did they just happen by chance? I prefer to think the former.

So whatever we think about dreams, they are a God-given gift in that He gave us the ability to dream. Whether we repress them as many do, ignore them as most do, or use them for creative purposes as some do is entirely up to each individual.

If you want to remember your dreams, keep a pen and pad at your bedside and record any dream that makes a strong impression on your mind. Speaking personally, dreams have given me some valuable insights for growth and recovery.

Compassion and Kindness

Michael Josephson of Character Counts shared how he "once read of a man on a subway with two young children who were being loud and unruly. The man seemed to ignore their behavior, so a fed-up passenger confronted him: 'Sir, don't you see how your children are disturbing everyone? How can you be so thoughtless?'

"The man sobbed, 'I'm so sorry. Their mom just died and I've been thinking of how we'll live without her.' In an instant the critic's self-righteousness turned to self-condemnation.

"Why is it that so many of us have to be hit over the head before we turn on our caring and empathy buttons?

"The next time you have the choice between being right and being kind, choose kindness."