A woman repeated a bit of gossip about a neighbor. Within a few days the whole community knew the story. The person it concerned was deeply hurt and offended. Later the woman responsible for spreading the rumor learned that it was completely untrue. She was very sorry and went to a wise old sage to find out what she could do to repair the damage.

“Go to the marketplace,” he said, “and purchase a chicken, and have it killed. Then on your way home, pluck its feathers and drop them one by one along the road.”

Although surprised by this advice, the woman did what she was told.

The next day the wise man said, “Now go and collect all those feathers you dropped yesterday and bring them back to me.”

The woman followed the same road, but to her dismay, the wind had blown the feathers all away. After searching for hours, she returned with only three in her hand.

“You see,” said the old sage, “it’s easy to drop them, but it’s impossible to get them back. So it is with gossip. It doesn’t take much to spread a rumor, but once you do, you can never completely undo the wrong.”

1. If you must envy, envy the woman who hugged the feet of the eternal God, or envy the children He held in His arms.
2. If you must steal, steal more time away from your daily routine and spend it with Jesus.
3. If you must murder, work on crucifying the “old man” who lives inside each born-again believer.[Caution: The old reprobate is extremely hard to kill and does not tend to stay dead very long.]
4. If you must lie, tell the “old man” he can do as he pleases today.
5. If you must be a man of strife, put on the whole armor of God and remember that we war not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, and against spiritual wickedness in high places.
6. If you must “get high” be intoxicated with the Holy Spirit.
7. If you must fear, fear that within yourself which can cause you to fall.
8. If you must be angry, rage against those sin-weaknesses in yourself.
9. If you must covet, covet those things that be of God: love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, and temperance.
10. If you must hate, hate the works of the flesh: adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, envyings, drunkenness, revellings, etc.
11. If you must be overly ambitious, reach for a star: ” … To him who overcomes, I will give the Morning Star.” (Rev. 2:26, 28).
12. If you must be lazy, lie down in His green pastures and walk beside His still waters.
13. If you must be shameless, walk this earth boldly, having no shame of your King or His gospel.
14. If you must be gluttonous, open your mouth wide for God to fill. (Psalm 81:10)
15. If you must be stubborn, trust in the Lord and you’ll be as Mount Zion, which cannot be removed, but which abides forever.
16. If you must be nosy, poke your nose into the gospel of Christ, which is something angels desire to look into. (I Peter 1:12)

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by Sharon Bouriaque

Whenever I drive to the east side of Portland over the Marquam Bridge, I’m reminded of what it took for God to save us. On the upper deck of that two-decker freeway spanning the wide Willamette River, you can catch a glimpse of an exit that drops off into empty space.

When the bridge was built back in the mid-1960s, it was designed to accommodate an east-running freeway still on the drawing boards, which was to be known as the Mount Hood Freeway. But the freeway was never built. Oregon voters opted for a light rail line instead, and plans for the highway were scrapped.

Even though there is no Mount Hood Freeway, you can certainly see Mount Hood from the top deck of the Marquam Bridge. On a clear days it looms on the eastern horizon—a symmetrical, snow-capped beauty. And if you look carefully, you can see how the bridge was built to accommodate a freeway lane veering off to the southeast. It juts out just a bit from the bridge structure, then
is cut off as though sliced by a giant knife.

The “exit,” permanently blocked, now goes nowhere—except into the waters of the Willamette far below. You can see Mount Hood in all its beauty, glistening like a jewel in the distance…. But you could never, never reach the high slopes of that mighty peak via the Mount Hood Freeway, because the freeway doesn’t exist.

That’s a picture of man’s relationship with God. We might understand there is a God and even yearn to reach him across an impossible distance. We might recognize his power and glory, his majesty and goodness, and desire with all our hearts to know him and be with him. But the distance is too great. The gulf is too wide.

Only through Jesus Christ can we cross that gulf to God the Father.

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Ron Mehl, Love Found a Way (Waterbrook, 1999)