The Old Man And The Gulls

Hello everyone.  Praise the Lord!

Text:  Proverbs 3:5-6; Psalm 37.

 THE OLD MAN AND THE GULLS

It is gratitude that prompted an old man to visit an old broken pier on the eastern seacoast of Florida. Every Friday night, until his death in 1973, he would return, walking slowly and slightly stooped with a large bucket of shrimp. The sea gulls would flock to this old man, and he would feed them from his bucket. Many years before, in October 1942, Captain Eddie Rickenbacker was on a mission in a B-17 to deliver an important message to General Douglas MacArthur in New Guinea. But there was an unexpected detour, which would hurl Captain Eddie into the most harrowing adventure of his life.

Eddie Rickenbacker

Somewhere over the South Pacific the Flying Fortress became lost beyond the reach of radio. Fuel ran dangerously low, so the men ditched their plane in the ocean... For nearly a month Captain Eddie and his companions would fight the water, and the weather, and the scorching sun. They spent many sleepless nights recoiling as giant sharks rammed their rafts. The largest raft was nine by five. The biggest shark...ten feet long.

But of all their enemies at sea, one proved most formidable: starvation. Eight days out, their rations were long gone or destroyed by the salt water. It would take a miracle to sustain them. And a miracle occurred. In Captain Eddie’s own words, "Cherry," that was the B- 17 pilot, Captain William Cherry, "read the service that afternoon, and we finished with a prayer for deliverance and a hymn of praise. There was some talk, but it tapered off in the oppressive heat. With my hat pulled down over my eyes to keep out some of the glare, I dozed off."

Now this is still Captain Rickenbacker talking..."Something landed on my head. I knew that it was a sea gull. I don’t know how I knew, I just knew. Everyone else knew too. No one said a word, but peering out from under my hat brim without moving my head, I could see the expression on their faces. They were staring at that gull. The gull meant food...if I could catch it." And the rest, as they say, is history. Captain Eddie caught the gull. Its flesh was eaten. Its intestines were used for bait to catch fish. The survivors were sustained and their hopes renewed because a lone sea gull, uncharacteristically hundreds of miles from land, offered itself as a sacrifice.

 You know that Captain Eddie made it. And now you also know...that he never forgot. Because every Friday evening, about sunset...on a lonely stretch along the eastern Florida seacoast...you could see an old man walking...white-haired, bushy-eye browed, slightly bent. His bucket filled with shrimp was to feed the gulls...to remember that one that, on a day long past, gave itself without a struggle...like manna in the wilderness.

SOURCE: "The Old Man and the Gulls" from Paul Harvey’s The Rest of the Story.

Scriptures: Exodus 16:11-18

William James Roop

Hospice Care and Dying

The Trucking Tango

Brother Roop teaches the Bible

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Story of Sheep

Hello everyone.  Praise the Lord!

Here is a cute story about sheep and us.

Text: 1 Peter 3:15.

 STORY OF SHEEP

In the Highlands of Scotland, sheep would often wander off into the rocks and get

into places that they couldn’t get out of. The grass on these mountains is very sweet

and the sheep like it, and they will jump down ten or twelve feet, and then they can’t

jump back again, and the shepherd hears them bleating in distress.

 They may be there for days, until they have eaten all the grass. The shepherd will wait until they

are so faint they cannot stand, and then they will put a rope around him, and he will

go over and pull that sheep up out of the jaws of death. "Why doesn’t the shepherd

go down there when the sheep first gets there? 

You see they are so very foolish they would dash right over the high edge and be killed if they did!" And that is the way with us, when we try do save ourselves thinking that we are a good person, kind, generous, honest, we are foolish and deceive ourselves, which leads to our eternal destruction.

William James Roop

Hospice Care and Dying

The Trucking Tango

Brother Roop teaches the Bible

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The Sin Of Gossip

Hello everyone.  Praise the Lord!

Here is a cute story about the sin of Gossip. 

Text:  Leviticus 19:16; James 1:26.

Tom recently told me a story about a man who went to a priest and confessed that the Lord had recently convicted him of gossip. He wanted to know what he could do to make it right. The priest told him to go to the top of a mountain, rip open a feather pillow, turn the feathers loose in the wind, and then come back the next day.

 So the man did like he was told. He went to the top of a mountain, tore open a feather pillow, and scattered the feathers to the wind. The next day he went back to the priest and asked what he was to do next. The priest told him to go back and collect all of the feathers. 

The man complained that it would be impossible to collect all of those feathers. They were scattered everywhere. That, my friend, was the point. Once you begin to gossip, the words to spread scatter to the wind and can never be retrieved. You don’t know where they are going to go, where they will land, or whom they will hurt.

William James Roop

Hospice Care and Dying

The Trucking Tango

Brother Roop teaches the Bible

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Move Along!

Hello everyone.  Praise the Lord!

Here is a funny story that I heard years ago.

Text: John 3:16

 In the Spring of 1924, Jack Sundine was a four-year-old kid, standing in a line with his father inside the White House, waiting to meet President Calvin Coolidge. As they neared him, Jack noticed that he said something to each visitor as they shook hands. Soon, the thrilling moment arrived. Jack put his small hand into the President’s. Then the President said words Jack will always remember: “Move along.”

In contrast, aren’t you glad that when we come to God, He doesn’t tell us to move along. No, He is personally involved in our lives and desires to hear from us.

William james Roop

Hospice Care and Dying

The Trucking Tango

Brother Roop teaches the Bible

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Just Keep Going

Hello everyone.  Praise the Lord!

Here is a story about patience in life.

Text:  Lamentations 3:25; Isaiah 40:31.

 Winston Churchill is remembered as perhaps the greatest prime minister in the history of Great Britain. By the steel of his will, he led his island nation to stand against Hitler and eventually triumph in World War ll. But years before that victorious moment for the ages, Churchill found himself plunging through a succession of devastating trapdoors–each one worse than the one before.

In August 1929, Churchill had managed to bring in approximately $70,000 into the family coffers. That’s a lot of money even today. In 1929, that was an unimaginable amount of money for a single month’s work. He invested nearly all of it into the American stock market. He then jotted a note to his wife saying how pleased he was to finally reach a place of financial independence. Less than ninety days later the stock market fell through it’s own trapdoor and Churchill lost virtually everything.

It was a major blow. Churchill had experienced ninety days of financial security–and then the bottom fell out. For the first time in his adult life he had been on easy street enjoying the prospects of a comfortable future and then the trapdoor fell open beneath his feet and down he went.

That setback alone would be enough to send most any man into the dungeon of depression. But there were two more difficulties that waited quietly and patiently for Churchill to arrive. In 1931, after serving his entire adult life as a central figure in the British government, he was not invited to serve in the cabinet. This was another staggering blow to Churchill. He had been banished to the political wilderness. While Hitler was working full-time to build his war machine, Churchill, virtually the only British politician who saw the reality of Hitler’s threat, was put out to pasture. When he should have been center stage, he was banished to his country home where he wrote, painted, and built brick walls and cleaned out the ponds to stay busy. The great statesman was sent down to the minors to play Class A ball when he should have been starting in the All Star game. This defeat was even more bitter than the financial loss. It was heating up in the British steel furnace.

And then in the same year, while he was trying to hold things together financially and fight off depression of political defeat, he decided to take a tour of Canada and the United States. In New York City he looked the wrong way while crossing a street and was hit by a taxi traveling at thirty-five miles per hour. The accident sent him to the hospital, clinging to life by a thread.

In less than three years he had suffered three shattering transitions that had devastated him financially, then politically, and then in an accident that nearly cost him his life. In a letter to their son from the hospital, his wife wrote: “Last night he was very sad and said he had now in the last two years had three very heavy blows. First the loss of all that money in the crash, then loss of political position in the Conservative Party and now this terrible injury. He said he did not think he would ever recover completely from the three events.”

At that point, as he recovered in that New York hospital room, Churchill was fifty-seven years old. Nine years later, at the right moment in history, the government that had ignored him would turn to him in desperation. But he could not see the future from the hospital bed. In fact, his prospects looked so bad that at that moment one of his enemies was emboldened enough to pronounce a political eulogy: “Churchill is finished!” Famous last words! History proved that statement to be just a bit premature. 

(Adapted from Steve Farrar – Tempered Steel)

William James Roop

Hospice Care and Dying

The Trucking Tango

Brother Roop teaches the Bible

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The Covenant Of Faithfulness

Hello everyone.  Praise the Lord!

Text: Psalm 119:89-90; Galatians 6:9.

 THE COVENANT OF FAITHFULNESS

In modern times we define a host of relations by contracts.

These are usually for goods or services and for hard cash. The contract, formal or informal, helps to specify failure in these relationships.

The Lord did not establish a contract with Israel or with the church. He created a covenant. There is a difference. Contracts are broken when one of the parties fails to keep his promise. If, let us say, a patient fails to keep an appointment with a doctor, the doctor is not obligated to call the house and inquire, "Where were you? Why didn’t you show up for your appointment?" He simply goes on to his next patient and has his appointment secretary take note of the patient who failed to keep the appointment. The patient may find it harder the next time to see the doctor. He broke an informal contract.

According to the Bible, however, the Lord asks: "Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne? Though she may forget, I will not forget you!" (Isaiah 49:15) The Bible indicates the covenant is more like the ties of a parent to her child than it is a doctor’s appointment.

If a child fails to show up for dinner, the parent’s obligation, unlike the doctor’s, isn’t canceled. The parent finds out where the child is and makes sure he’s cared for. One member’s failure does not destroy the relationship.

A covenant puts no conditions on faithfulness. It is the unconditional commitment to love and serve.

SOURCE: Bruce Shelley

Scriptures: Isaiah 49:15

William James Roop

Hospice Care and Dying

The Trucking Tango

Brother Roop teaches the Bible

Books by William Roop

Self-Seeking Saints

Hello everyone.  Praise the Lord! 

Here is an article by an unknown author that I wanted to share.

Cnidius, a skillful architect, building a watchtower for the King of Egypt, caused his own name to be engraved upon a stone in the wall in great letters, and afterwards covered it, with lime and mortar, and upon the outside of that wrote the name of the King of Egypt in golden letters.

 This was all done by Cnidius, pretending that it was for the honor and glory of the King of Egypt. But herein was his cunning: he very well knew that the dashing of the water would, in time consume the plastering, as it did, and then his name and memory should abide to after generations.

 Thus, there be many in this world who pretend to seek only the glory of God, the good of His church, and the happiness of the state, but if there were a window to look into their hearts we should find nothing there within but self seeking.

Scriptures: Matthew 6:13

William James Roop

Hospice Care and Dying

The Trucking Tango

Brother Roop teaches the Bible

Books by William Roop