Keep The Change

Julie Cosgrove

Take today’s next step: Try something new – take the 35 Day Challenge

“Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.” (James 1:17)

Do you like change? Not many people really do. Change brings on a cluster of butterflies dancing in the stomach or a taut rubber band of tension in the neck. It quickens our breath and makes our minds swirl with “what if’s?”

Change can be exciting. Do you recall your first day of high school? Or college? The day of your wedding, or when you discovered you were pregnant? Do you remember the day your child left home? What about the day you retired?

There are other times when life changes in a blink of an eye, and perhaps not for the better. We get a pink slip. We get the call at two in the morning that every parent dreads. The weather warning horn blares minutes before our neighborhood is destroyed. The tests reveal cancer. Our husband’s attorney serves the papers.

Hope Returns When We Remember God's Unfailing Love

by Rick Warren

“Yet hope returns when I remember this one thing: The Lord's unfailing love and mercy still continue, fresh as the morning, as sure as the sunrise. The Lord is all I have, and so in him I put my hope.” (Lamentations 3:21-24 GNT)

Pain is a natural part of life. You can’t escape it. Broken relationships, missed opportunities, and rough seasons of life will always be with us. When they do come, you can either become bitter or hopeful.

The choice is yours.

Jeremiah faced the same choice. When his world came apart after Jerusalem was sacked in 586 B.C., the prophet wrote the book of Lamentations to share his honest frustrations with God. But he didn’t settle in his bitterness and stay there.

In Lamentations 3:21-24, after sharing his bitter feelings, he wrote, “Yet hope returns when I remember this one thing: The Lord's unfailing love and mercy still continue, fresh as the morning, as sure as the sunrise. The Lord is all I have, and so in him I put my hope” (GNT).

Easier Than Pi

For centuries, mankind has been trying to “square the circle” — that is, create a square of area equal to that of a circle, using nothing more than a straightedge and a compass in a finite number of steps. Most believed — and, we know now — that any such attempt is futile. The area of a circle requires the use of the mathematical constant pi (approximately 3.141592), and in 1882, German mathmetician Ferdinand von Lindemann demonstrated that piis a transcendental number, and, therefore, squaring the circle is an impossible task.

But that has not stopped others from trying. Of particular note is the attempt of an amateur mathematican named Edwin J. Goodwin, who claimed to have discovered the mysterious solutions to problems long since believed impossible — because they were, in fact, impossible. Beyond squaring the circle, he also claimed to have solutions for angle trisection and doubling the cube, a trifecta which, if accomplished, would put his name alongside that of Euclid himself.