To live a long time is nothing, to live a long time wisely is something.”
–Louis L’Amour (The Californios)
“My child, never forget the things I have taught you. Store my commands in your heart. If you do this, you will live many years, and your life will be satisfying.”
–Proverbs 3:1-2 (NLT)
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See if you feel a pin-prick or maybe a dagger thrust as you read the following. All I can say is “Ouch!”
“If anyone, then, knows the good they ought to do and doesn’t do it, it is sin for them.”
–James 4:17 (NIV)
“Most of the time when we sin we are fully aware that we are doing so. We know what we ought to do but our selfish sinful nature leads us astray. We rationalize our sins by telling ourselves that no one is being hurt or that no one will know, or that everyone acts this way.
Driving over the speed limit is a good example. When we drive over the speed limit we are usually aware and rationalize our bad driving behavior by telling ourselves we really aren’t hurting anyone. Or we might tell ourselves that everyone else seems to be going over the speed limit too.
One who rationalizes these small sins will probably find it easy to rationalize larger and more serious ones. We know the good we ought to do; we just don’t want to do it. Everyone should make a more serious effort to do the right thing, all the time and without rationalizing.”
(taken from the “Good News Journal”)
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November 3, 1723, a child was born in the colony of Delaware–Samuel Davies. He would be ordained a Presbyterian minister in 1747 and began to preach in Virginia, a place where the established church was the Church of England. He was the first preacher licensed outside the established church.
While pastoring in Virginia he heard of a new college founded in New Jersey. It started out as the Log College, but was now calling itself the College of New Jersey and it was open to all denominations. The school persuaded him to travel with one of the founders, evangelist Gilbert Tennent, to England to raise money for the school and they raised enough to erect the first permanent building, Nassau Hall. Later he was asked to serve as president of this school and by the time he died in 1761, the school was being called Princeton.
Patrick Henry remembered Davies as the man who taught him what an orator should be as he heard him preach many times as a child. Davies “would be very proud that the college he helped establish is one of the elite schools in America. He would likely be horrified that the school has, like the other Ivy League colleges, become aggressively secular.”
(taken from The Christian History)