He knew everything about everything and we listening to him for hours as he told of discoveries and books and worlds he had visited. He said there was no God. Of course we believed him; he had a college degree. He drank and smoked and after divorcing his wife, he had many women. Since he was the smartest man in the world, we also drank and smoked and tried to have as many girls as we could. He eventually discovered drugs and suggested we all try them. Of course we did. He was the smartest man in the world. One day I asked the smartest man in the world how he knew there was no God. At first he smiled and spoke softly, but soon he was shaking his fist and raising his voice. Soon, he was screaming. Was he angry with me or the God who was not there? He never answered my question, but I believed in him because he was the smartest man in the world. One day it occurred to me that the smartest man in the world knew nearly nothing, not even what one of his 100-trillion cells were doing at any given moment. Why had I had followed him into this hell of contradictions and hatred? One day I met the dumbest man in the world. He told me stories that I had heard as a child. The dumbest man in the world was kind and tolerant and gave me a book to read and sent me on a journey that has yet to end. The smartest man in the world and the dumbest man in the world died on the very same day. The smartest man in the world died cursing, the dumbest man in the world, died praying. The dumbest man in the world and the smartest man in the world saw God. The dumbest man in the world fell to his knees and gave praise to the One he had followed forever as he entered heaven. The smartest man in the world told God that He (God) did not exist and therefore heaven and hell did not exist. So he went to the hell that he did not exist, even though the heat sometimes made him wonder. This all happened a long time ago, but not an eternity.
Every million years a butterfly brushes a wing against a metal ball ten thousand times harder and larger than the sun. By the time the ball is worn to nothing, one second will have gone by in eternity. ~Lucas Parable
When I was a kid I would look through the dictionary and read words. When I got older I read a lot of books. When I got older still I wanted to write books. I wrote some books and now I wonder what the big deal was. After all, it is just a matter of taking all the words in the dictionary and arranging them in your own order. Who can’t do that? Big words are especially easy because so few people understand them. But small words can be more powerful. Two words totaling two vowels and one consonant nearly got a man killed once. “I am,” said Jesus in a way that makes no grammatical sense: …before Abraham was, I am (John 8:58). The story continues by saying that the religious leaders tried to kill Jesus. Even the worst teachers wouldn’t kill you for bad grammar. Legally, however, Jewish religious law allowed them to kill someone for blasphemy. Hey wait, what did God tell Moses His name was? Either Jesus’ sentence is poorly constructed or these are about the most important words in the world. Let’s look at that sentence construction again.~E. Samuel Prophet
To die for, we hear that phrase a lot, usually spoken flippantly about food or shoes. The other day a friend asked me what I would die for and I thought back to being a young dad, crossing the street with my then two-year-old daughter in my arms. As I crossed, a car failed to stop at the sign and the bumper came screeching toward us. Then, without thinking, I found myself putting myself between my only child and a stranger’s car, ready to be sacrificed to death’s wheels. The car stopped a fraction of an inch from me, and both my daughter and I were spared.
I cannot think of any thing that I would die for. I like to think I would die for an idea like freedom. I would probably die for a close friend or family member, but not the driver who could have killed me. And never for someone who flipped me off, spat at me, or beat me senseless. What about a streetwalker?
In Victor Hugo’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Quasimodo dies with his arms entangled around Esmeralda, the streetwalker who once gave him water. But I was never as kind as Esmeralda. I was there when they gave dying man vinegar to drink. He in turn, got in the way of the car, crushed beneath the wheels.~Lucas Parable
