THE ONE YEAR ILLUSTRATIONS CLUB

To All Ye Pilgrims: In as much as the great Father has given us this year an abundant harvest of Indian corn, wheat, beans, squashes, and garden vegetables, and has made the forests to abound with game and the sea with fish and clams, and in as much as He has protected us from the ravages of the savages, has spared us from pestilence and disease, has granted us freedom to worship God according to the dictates of our own conscience; now, I, your magistrate, do proclaim that all ye Pilgrims, with your wives and little ones, do gather at ye meeting house, on ye hill, between the hours of 9 and 12 in the day time, on Thursday, November ye 29th of the year of our Lord one thousand six hundred and twenty-three, and third year since ye Pilgrims landed on ye Pilgrim Rock, there to listen to ye pastor, and render thanksgiving to ye Almighty God for all His blessings.  

It is the duty of nations as well as of men to own their dependence upon the overruling power of God; to confess their sins and transgressions in humble sorrow, yet with assured hope that genuine repentance will lead to mercy and pardon; and to recognize the sublime truth, announced in the Holy Scriptures and proven by all history, that those nations are blessed whose God is the Lord. We have been the recipients of the  choicest  bounties of heaven; we have been preserved these many years in peace and prosperity; we have grown in numbers, wealth and power as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us, and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of re...

If all your life you’ve eaten a “healthy” diet.  You’ve followed the  USDA Food Pyramid  from the beginning, and were always told supplements were unnecessary as long as you ate a balanced diet (whatever that means). Maybe you’re wiser now, and are following a higher nutrient diet .  Either way, one of the most repeated beliefs among health conscious people is that you can – and should – get all of your nutrients from food.  With over  fifty percent of the nation consuming a multivitamin , this isn’t a universal belief.  However,  multivitamins often make people think they can eat even worse , which isn’t exactly productive.   Many people are shamed into avoiding supplements with statements like “So you’re too lazy to eat real food?  You think you can fix everything with a pill?”  We all have those health conscious friends who decry supplementation as dogma.  They are confusing drugs like statins with nutrients.  They are...

One man challenged another to an all-day wood chopping contest. The challenger worked very hard, stopping only for a brief lunch break. The other man had a leisurely lunch and took several breaks during the day. At the end of the day, the challenger was surprised and annoyed to find that the other fellow had chopped substantially more wood than he had. "I don't get it," he said. "Every time I checked, you were taking a rest, yet you chopped more wood than I did." "But you didn't notice," said the winning woodsman, "that I was sharpening my ax when I sat down to rest." L. S. Chafer, Grace.

According to a Greek legend, in ancient Athens a man noticed the great storyteller Aesop playing childish games with some little boys. He laughed and jeered at Aesop, asking him why he wasted his time in such frivolous activity. Aesop responded by picking up a bow, loosening its string, and placing it on the ground. Then he said to the critical Athenian, "Now, answer the riddle, if you can. Tell us what the unstrung bows implies." The man looked at it for several moments but had no idea what point Aesop was trying to make. Aesop explained, "If you keep a bow always bent & strained, it will break eventually; but if you let it go slack, it will be more fit for use when you want it." You will be at your best for the Lord if you have taken time to loosen the bow.