NISHIOKA'S GENEROUSITY

"Generosity is not giving me that which I need more than you do, but it is giving me that which you need more than I do." - Khalil Gibran

Mr. Nishioka, aged seventy, was a local businessman. He was seriously ill with
kidney disease and had been told by doctors that he needed a transplant urgently. He had almost given up hope of finding a matching organ until the waiter, Jose Rocasa, fifty-two, volunteered one of his own. Nishioka said, 'I didn't have long to survive and the doctors said that it was unlikely that they could find a match in time. But with a good man here and a lot of help from above, now I am alive and well.'

In the twenty-two years that Mr Nishioka had frequented the hotel, Mr Rocasa had been his waiter, and recalled that he had always been kind and affable - and had tipped generously. 'I just wanted to help him,' he said. 'For years, we have this friendship in which he comes to lunch and I do my best to make him very happy, and he is always good to me in return. So of course I say, "Don't worry - I can give you a kidney."'

Mr Nishioka sowed generousity and he reaped generousity! The Bible shows that: "We reap WHAT we sow. We reap LATER than we sow, and We reap MUCH MORE than we sow." There's no way Mr.

DIVINE PROTECTION

"How prone to doubt, how cautious are the wise!" - Alexander Pope

It's almost every day in the news, we hear outrageous news that boggles the mind. News mostly about how unsafe life has become: as almost everything can kill or harm us. As a matter of fact, in some sense, I believe medical science has become confused about what we should, or should not do.

 
Bill Bryson narrates in, "Life's Little Gambles." Scientists at the University of Pittsburgh recently reported that showers release toxic chemicals into the air. So while we merrily lather away and sing our hearts out, these chemicals in the water are quietly turning into vapors, exposing us to chemical concentrations up to 10 times greater than we would receive by drinking the water.

TODAY, IT IS!

"The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown." - H. P. Lovecraft

As Christians, we gradually forget what God's Word is there for, especially in trial. The Bible, is actually the solution to whatever our challenge is.

Dr. F.W. Boreham tells about his stay in a quaint old cottage in England occupied by a minister's widow. She had given him her bedroom and in the morning when he pulled up the blind, he saw that into the glass of the windowpane had been cut the words: "This is the day." He asked the elderly lady about it at breakfast. She explained that she had had a lot of trouble in her time and was always afraid of what was going to happen tomorrow. One day she read the words of the above text. It occurred to her that it meant any day, this day. "Why should I be afraid of the days if He makes them?" So the widow scratched the words as well as she could in the windowpane, so that every time she drew

THERE'S A SOLUTION!

"Every form of addiction is bad, no matter whether the narcotic be alcohol or morphine or idealism." - Carl Jung

Solution

Like blind Bartimaeus, many of us wake up to life and find that life has happened to us. We come to notice that our circumstances are the way they are, not because we chose for them to be so, but because it just happened and we had no choice, but God is on your path today.

Nicky Gumbel narrates this story in Bible in one year 2016. Pippa and I (Nicky Gumbel) met Ah Yin when we visited Jackie Pullinger's work in Hong Kong. He had become a drug addict as a teenager. His father was an addict. He was brought up in the notorious Walled City. He joined a gang at the age of eleven. They ate, stole and fought together. They took heroin together. At the age of fourteen,

CHANGE AGENTS!

"Example is leadership." - Albert Schweitzer

Martin Luther King Jr was a follower of Jesus. His agenda was the kingdom of God. The kingdom of God is not just about the conversion of individuals - important though that is - but about the transformation of society.

Martin Luther King Jr (1929-1968) lived and died to see society get transformed. In 1964, he became the youngest person ever to receive the Nobel Peace Prize for his work to end social segregation and discrimination. In one of the greatest and most quoted speeches of all time he spoke of his dream of one day living in a nation where his children would be judged by the content of their character, and not by the colour of their skin. He spoke of his 'dream that one day (that) even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of