Open Secrets: Discovering God Together

By James P. Long

I knew the book was special long before I knew why. It had been a Christmas gift from my parents 

“God could have conducted unending individual spiritual conferences. But He does not want us connected only to Him; He wants us connected also to one another.”back when I’d have chosen cars and trucks and guns and games. Yet there was, I sensed, something different about this boxed Book with its black leatherette cover. The Holy Bible Containing the Old and New Testaments Translated Out of the Original Tongues and with the Former Translations Diligently Compared and Revised. The Authorized King James Version, 1611, Red Letter Edition.

I was 9.

Over the years, I occasionally opened the box, but rarely read The Book—until much later. For some reason I can scarcely explain, I tossed the Bible in the car as I packed for a camping trip. That impulse led to my first startling experience of this Book “speaking to me.”

Luke : The Man Who Wrote the Most Beautiful Book in the World

Luke, Lucas [Lo̅o̅ke,Lo̅o̅'cas]—light-giving or luminous.

The Man Who Wrote the Most Beautiful Book in the World

Less is known of Luke than any other New Testament writer. This we do know, he was a Gentile and probably the brother of Titus (2 Cor. 8:16; 12:18). Paul speaks of him as a “beloved physician.” Luke must have been a man of some wealth, otherwise he could not have traveled with Paul as his friend and useful companion (Acts 1:1; Col. 4:14; 2 Tim. 4:11; Philem. 24). Tertullian said of this native of Antioch that he received his illumination from Paul.

Luke was a man of learning and knowledge, an exact observer and faithful recorder. His medical training taught him to be exact. He is in the first rank as a reliable historian, scholarly, skillful and sympathetic (Luke 1:1-3;Acts 1:1-3). His gospel is the most literary of the four. With his Greek mind he had a sense of form, a beautiful style—studied and elaborate. A poet, he was unsurpassed as a word-painter. Luke’s gospel has been described as the most wonderful book ever written, the most beautiful book in the world. Above it and within it we hear the rustle of the angels' wings, the music of angels’songs.

Dr. Thomas Harris, a Reported Suicide, Spikes Rumormongers: 'i'm Ok—you're in Trouble'

By Nancy Faber

Years ago there was a book on the market called I'm OK—You're OK. People said, "That's a wonderful new book—new psychology, new things to follow." Most people today don't know that the author of that book committed suicide about two years ago.
A Maryland radio preacher named Larry Tomczak allegedly imparted this information to a crowd of 8,000 at the Jesus West Coast rally in Chico, Calif. a year ago. No one was more upset at the news than Dr. Thomas Harris, the Sacramento psychiatrist who wrote the 1969 best-selling self-help book, and who was and is very much alive. Even before the rally his family had been hounded by the rumors. His daughters were questioned about him at school. His wife, Amy, a journalist and collaborator on the book, received a note of concern from a woman in Japan. A graduate seminar at a California university pondered the meaning of his death, and at least one after-dinner speaker made a joke of Harris' not-OK end. "Once, the girls heard a rumor that he had killed somebody as well," shudders Amy. "It was all so gross." 

'The Joy Of Sex': The Original Hairy, Musky EditionJoy Of

Nicole Cliffe

It came! It came! The original 1972 Joy of Sex. Thank you, Mohammed from Brookline, MA. May your positive Amazon ratings never go down. (Look at all the unintentional sexual innuendo we've already covered!) I especially would like to thank Mohammed for making my back-up plan obsolete: taking my mother up on her offer to "see if she can figure out what she did with her copy."

And now that it's here, and I'm looking at it, it's a little gross. But endearingly gross. For a much better and more exhaustive look at the merits and career of Alex Comfort, M.B., Ph.D., I would refer you to Ariel Levy's delightful New Yorker piece from 2009. For a wry fictional take on what it would be like to be the children of the book's authors, you should pick up Meg Wolitzer's The Position, in which the Comforts become the Mellows, and it does not go well for them.

Initial Point

by David H. Roper

Our Daily Bread is hosted by Les Lamborn

Read: Psalm 119:97-104

It is written, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.” —Matthew 4:4

Bible in a Year:
Amos 7-9

If you drive south of our home in Boise, Idaho, you’ll see a volcanic butte that rises out of the sagebrush on the east side of the road. This is the initial point from which the state of Idaho was surveyed.

In 1867, four years after Idaho was organized as a territory, Lafayette Cartee, the Surveyor General of the United States, commissioned Peter Bell to survey the new territory. Bell took a sledge and drove a brass post into a little knob on the summit of that butte, declaring it to be the initial point from which he began his survey.

The survey established the language of land description in Idaho: Townships are designated north and south of the initial point; ranges are designated east and west. With such descriptions, you always know exactly where you are.

Humor : In an Instant

A guy arrives at the pearly gates, waiting to be admitted. God is reading through the Big Book to see if the guy's name is written in it. After several minutes, God closes the book, furrows his brow, and says, "I'm sorry, I don't see your name written in the Book."

"How current is your copy?" he asks.

"I get a download every ten minutes," God replies, "why do you ask?"

"I'm embarrassed to admit it, but I was always the stubborn type. It was not until my death was immanent that I cried out to you God, so my name probably hasn't arrived to your copy yet."

"I'm glad to hear that," God says, "but while we're waiting for the update to come through, can tell me about a really good deed that you did in your life?"

How to Pick Up The Pieces Of Your Life

Every so often, whether it’s after a long hard spate of work, finishing a big project, ending a relationship or recovering from a crisis (big or small) I find myself repeating the same rituals of recovery. If at any point in the process I feel lost or unbound and ungrounded, I just have to get back into the order of this list and all becomes well again. Last week I took some time off from work to recover from a busy few months and it worked again. Maybe it will work for you, too?