THE ONE YEAR ILLUSTRATIONS CLUB

1n 1994 Don Calhoun, lived in Chicago, and worked at a five dollar an hour job. He decided one night to go to a Chicago Bulls game -- only the second or third game he'd ever gone to in his life. On his way into the game, he was stopped by someone from the Bulls organization in the lobby. She said, "We're doing a promotion during the third quarter. Would you want to participate?" He agreed. During a time-out in the third quarter, they called Don Calhoun onto the court, gave him a basketball, and positioned him by the free throw line of one of the baskets and pointed him toward the other basket. This would be almost a full court shot. They said, "You have one shot. If you make it, we'll give you a million dollars." They called this promotion: "The Million Dollar Shot." Calhoun took the ball and threw it towards the basket. Just after he let it go, Phil Jackson, the coach for the Chicago Bulls said out loud: "It's going in." And sur...

It's Sunday morning at 6AM, and Dutch Hoorenbeek rolls out of bed to check on his strip club and do some renovations to an outside party deck. He then fires several tenants in his mall for not paying rent, signs up four new ones, and transports to his office to spend some time with his wife, Tenaj Jackelope. The thing is, in real life, Dutch Hoorenbeek is actually Ric Hoogestraat, a call-center operator making $14 an hour. He's also married to Sue Hoogestraat, not Tenaj Jackelope. Confusing? It should be. Turns out that Ric and Sue's marriage is on the rocks. She contends that he spends more time online in HIS Second Life, a virtual universe currently home to 30 million players, with his online wife. Sue spends her days in front of the television, while Ric is in the other room running a virtual night club and consorting with his online wife, sometimes for as long as 14 hours at a time on weekends. Although Sue Hoogestraat has attended "gaming widow" support group...

The term 'escapism' is reserved for those who take excessive time away from real life to the point at which they seem to be trying to escape from it. Traditionally regarded as extreme, escapism is in fact increasingly the norm for many people. In Japan, for example, the average household watches over 8 hours of television per day. Escapism is not defined by the behavior itself but the motivation behind it. Anything from sport to fashion to sex can become escapist activities. Certain escapist options are socially accepted, such as  consumerism , celebrity worship, others are not, such as recreational drug use. Modern  technology  has brought digital culture - television, films, increasingly realistic computer games and virtual realities that provide escapist experiences with huge degrees of immersion. Means of escapism have become increasingly varied over the past few decades, but fascination in details remains a popular one. We interpret the popularity of escapism as...

An 80-year-old woman’s seemingly straightforward obituary took a dark turn that no one could have predicted. The obituary for Kathleen Dehmlow (Schunk) first appeared in the  Redwood Gazette  this week. It stated she was born on March 19, 1938, and resided in Springfield, Minn. She married Dennis Dehmlow in 1957 and had two children with him -- Gina and Jay. The next sentence is where the obituary’s tone appeared to change. “In 1962 she became pregnant by her husband’s brother Lyle Dehmlow and moved to California. She abandoned her children, Gina and Jay who were raised by her parents in Clements, Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Schunk,” the obituary reads. OBIT: COLONEL LEAVES BEHIND WIFE, KIDS, BAD BELTWAY DRIVERS The next two sentences were particularly crushing. “She passed away on May 31, 2018, in Springfield and will now face judgment. She will not be missed by Gina and Jay, and they understand that this world is a better place without her,” the obituary concluded.

J MCMATH, BIBLE COMMENTATOR WROTE: 1. Every person is serving a god(s) in his life. 2. Every person is transformed into an image of his god. 3. That for which I would give anything and accept nothing in exchange is the most important thing in my life. Whatever that is...is my god! (cf. Isa. 44:6-20).

There are many variations to this story, but it’s quite instructive. In South America, Africa and Asia, the natives have devised a very effective method of trapping monkeys. The plan is deceptively simple: the natives take a gourd or some similar object and drill a hole just large enough for a monkey’s hand to pass through; they add some extra weight to the gourd with sand or pebbles, then put a nut or some fruit inside and place the gourd where a monkey will find it. Here’s what happens: the monkey sticks his hand through the hole to get the food — but with the prize in its grasp, the monkey cannot get its hand back out. The hole is too small for the monkey’s hand to pass through so long as it’s holding the treat, and the gourd is too heavy for the creature to carry. Because the monkey will not let go of its prize, it becomes trapped. The animal gives up its freedom to hold on to a small piece of food. It seems obvious that all the monkey needs to do is let go of the bait and it c...

A cleaning woman at an Italian gallery  accidentally threw away thousands of dollars of art  by New York modernist  Paul Branca  when she mistook his crumpled newspaper, cardboard, and cookie installation scattered across the floor for garden-variety trash. The pieces, estimated to be worth around $15,000, were apparently  intended to make viewers think  of the environment. "We are obviously very sorry for what happened," city marketing Commissioner Antonio Maria Vasile said. The gallery says  they do not blame the cleaning woman , who "did not realize she had thrown away two works and their value she simply did not realize the value of what was in front of her. This woman is not the only one to have thrown away something of great value, “for what will a man give or sell, in exchange for his soul”

The name Stradivarius is synonymous with fine violins. This is true because Antonius Stradivarius insisted that no instrument constructed in his shop be sold until it was as near perfection as human care and skill could make it. Stradivarius observed, "God needs violins to send His music into the world, and if any violins are defective God's music will be spoiled." His work philosophy was summed up in one sentence: "Other men will make other violins, but no man shall make a better one."

It’s the 23 year anniversary looking back on the infamous day that the goalie legend left the Montreal Canadians hockey organization. AS THE STORY GOES…. Before the game, former stars from the two clubs were introduced: Marcel Pronovost and Mickey Redmond for the Wings, Bernard ‘Boom Boom’ Geoffrion and Maurice Richard for the Canadiens. The Rocket received a standing ovation that lasted several minutes. Then the whirlwind was unleashed. By the end of the first period, Detroit already led 5-1. Patrick couldn’t blame himself for any of the goals. Every goal was a fine piece of that Patrick was powerless to stop. It was probably a good time to change goalies.  It’s hard to blame a rookie coach for being overconfident. At the very least, it was necessary to limit the humiliation on a Saturday night at the Forum. When the second period began, there were two minutes and 39 seconds remaining in Brisebois’ penalty. Detroit cashed in on the man advantage. The score was 6-1. In Tr...

In 1519 Capitan Hernando Cortes and a small army left the Spanish held island of Cuba and set out on one of the greatest conquests in the history of the world, ~When Cortez, ordered his crew to fight the Aztecs in Mexico, he met resistance. After all, his crew was grossly outnumbered. What was the incentive? Once they were ashore, Cortez set fire to his own ships. Bernal Diaz tells that Cortes was advised by his men to destroy his ships. Diaz states, “. . . we who were his friends advised him . . . not to leave a single ship in port, but to destroy them all immediately, in order to leave no cause of trouble behind.” (Diaz, 130) Diaz goes on to say, “The ships were destroyed with our full knowledge, with that act, he changed the question from “Why should we attack the natives?” to “How will we win the fight?” The incentive was now eminently clear to crew members-saving their own lives. They no longer had a Plan B to fall back on. Interestingly, the Aztecs, who witnessed the burning of ...

When the good Lord created mothers, He was into His sixth day of overtime, when an angel appeared and said, "You're doing a lot of fiddling around on this one." The Lord replied, "Have you seen the specs on this order? She has to be completely washable, but not plastic; Have 180 moveable parts ...all replaceable; Run on black coffee and leftovers; Have a lap that disappears when she stands up; A kiss that can cure anything from a broken leg to a disappointing love affair; And six pair of hands." The angel shook her head slowly and said, "Six pair of hands? No way!" "It's not the hands that are causing me problems," said the Lord. "It's the three pair of eyes that mothers have to have. One pair that sees through closed doors when she asks 'What are you kids doing in there?' when she already knows. Another in back of her head that sees what she shouldn't, but what she needs to know, and of course the ones in front...

When it was built for an international exposition in the last century, the structure was called monstrous by the citizens of the city, who demanded it be torn down as soon as the exposition was over. Yet from the moment its architect first conceived it, he took pride in it and loyally defended it from those who wished to destroy it. He knew it was destined for greatness. Today it is one of the architectural wonders of the modern world and stands as the primary landmark of  Paris ,  France . The architect, of course, was Alexandre Gustave Eiffel. His famous tower was built in 1889. In the same way we are struck by Jesus' loyalty to another structure, the church; which he entrusted to an unlikely band of disciples, whom he defended, prayed for, and prepared to spread the gospel. To outsiders they (and we) must seem like incapable blunderers, but Jesus, the architect of the church, knows this structure is destined for greatness when he returns and He defends with a passions equal...

The supply clerk was captured March 23 after her 507th Maintenance Company convoy was ambushed in the southern Iraqi city of  Nasiriyah . The Prisoner of War was rescued from an Iraqi’s on April 1 by  U.S.  commandos, reportedly after a tip from an Iraqi lawyer, which also led to the recovery of eight bodies of soldiers who had been captured along with her. When  U.S.  commandos staged their daring rescue in Nasiriyah, they found a frightened woman who hid under a sheet when they stormed into her room. Jessica Lynch, called out an American soldier, approaching her bed. “We are  United States  soldiers and were here to rescue you and take you home”. Peering from behind the sheet as he removed his helmet, she looked up and said, “I’m an American soldier, too.” Never in her life was she so glad to see an American face, even more so, that is was the face of her deliverer. Have you seen the face of your deliverer? You are the captive and Jesus is the Delive...

Few doubt that Americans care about improving their health. You might even say some of us are obsessed with it: Our smoking rate is down, sales of nutritional supplements are up, restaurants with low-calorie fare are thriving and throngs of walkers and runners crowd local 5K races every weekend. But there's one area where too many of us still stumble over good intentions — following our prescriptions. The American Heart Association reports that 12 percent of American adults fail to fill some prescriptions; 12 percent don't take a medication after bringing it home; 22 percent take a smaller dosage than prescribed; and nearly 30 percent stop taking their medicine before it runs out — and analysts believe that surveys underestimate  non adherence  because some patients lie about whether they're taking their drugs. "It doesn't work for patients to decide for themselves what medicines they'll take, when or for how long," she says. Diabetics who reduce their i...

Tom turned to Mark and said, “hey, Mark, what did you say to Paul yesterday? I saw him the day before and he was really down in the dumps; said he spoke with you and you really helped him. I tried talking to him too, I told him this, I told him that, but I couldn't seem to help him. What could you have possibly told him that I didn't, I’m really curious to know”.   Mark turned around and said, “actually I didn't’ say a thing, I just listened”.

How many Bibles do you have in your house? For most of us, Bibles are easily accessible, and many of us have several. That we have the Bible in English owes much to William Tyndale, sometimes called the Father of the English Bible. 90% of the King James Version of the Bible and 75% of the Revised Standard Version are from the translation of the Bible into English made by William Tyndale, yet Tyndale himself was burned at the stake for his work on October 6, 1536. Back in the fourteenth century, John Wycliffe was the first to make (or at least oversee) an English translation of the Bible, but that was before the invention of the printing press and all copies had to be hand written. Besides, the church had banned the unauthorized translation of the Bible into English in 1408. Over one hundred years later, however, William Tyndale had a burning desire to make the Bible available to even the common people in  England . After studying at  Oxford  and  Cambridge , he joine...

     "You" said the doctor to the patient, "are in terrible shape. You've got to do something about it. First, tell your wife she’s going to have to change and start cooking more nutritious meals. Stop working like a dog. Also, inform your wife you're going to change & make a budget, and she has to stick to it. And have her keep the kids off your back so you can relax. Unless there are some changes like that in your life, you'll probably be dead in a month."      "Doc," the patient said, "this would sound more official coming from you. Could you please call my wife and give her those instructions?"      When the fellow got home, his wife rushed to him. "I talked to your doctor," she wailed. Pretending like he didn’t know what he had called to tell her, he asked “oh, what did he say”  he can’t wait to hear HER say, "I have to change, I have to start budgeting, cooking healthier meals” The wife did not answer.  ...

TAUNTON, Mass. — A woman who sent her boyfriend a barrage of text messages urging him to kill himself when they were both teenagers was convicted Friday of involuntary manslaughter in a trial that raised questions of whether words can kill. Juvenile Court Judge Lawrence Moniz found that Michelle Carter caused the death of Conrad Roy III, who intentionally filled his truck with carbon monoxide in a store parking lot in July 2014. Carter cried as Moniz detailed her conduct in explaining how he reached his verdict, but she remained stoic when it was formally pronounced. The judge noted that the 18-year-old Roy climbed out of the truck as it was filling with toxic gas and told Carter he was scared. “Get back in,” Carter told Roy, according to a friend who testified Carter described the conversation in a text message to her about a month after Roy died. “This court finds that instructing Mr. Roy to ‘get back in’ the truck constitutes wanton and reckless conduct by Ms. Carter,” the jud...

William Tyndale   was the Captain of the Army of Reformers, and was their spiritual leader. Tyndale holds the distinction of being the first man to ever print the New Testament in the English language. Tyndale was a true scholar and a genius, so fluent in eight languages that it was said one would think any one of them to be his native tongue. He is frequently referred to as the “Architect of the English Language”, (even more so than William Shakespeare) as so many of the phrases Tyndale coined are still in our language today. Martin Luther had a small head-start on Tyndale, as Luther declared his intolerance for the Roman Church’s corruption on Halloween in 1517, by nailing his 95 Theses of Contention to the  Wittenberg   Church  door. Luther, who would be exiled in the months following the Diet of Worms Council in 1521 that was designed to martyr him, would translate the New Testament into German for the first time from the 1516 Greek-Latin New Testament of Era...

Dr. J. Wilbur Chapman told of a distinguished minister, Dr. Howard, from Australia who preached very strongly on the subject of sin. After the service, one of the church officers came to counsel with him in the study. "Dr. Howard," he said, "we don't want you to talk as openly as you do about man's guilt and corruption, because if our boys and girls hear you discussing that subject they will more easily become sinners. Call it a mistake if you will, but do not speak so plainly about sin. "The minister took down a small bottle and showing it to the visitor said, "You see that label? It says strychnine -- and underneath in bold, red letters the word 'Poison!' Do you know, man, what you are asking me to do? You are suggesting that I change the label. Suppose I do, and paste over it the words, 'Essence of Peppermint'; don't you see what might happen? Someone would use it, not knowing the danger involved, and would certainly die. So it is...

LONDON  – A British pilot who was suddenly blinded by a stroke during a solo flight was talked safely down by a military pilot, the Royal Air Force said Friday. Jim O'Neill asked for help after he went blind 40 minutes into a flight from  Scotland  to southeastern  England  last week. The BBC reported that O'Neill, flying a small Cessna aircraft, lost his sight 5,500 feet in the air. "It was terrifying," O'Neill said. "Suddenly, I couldn't see the dials in front of me."  The air force said in a news release that O'Neill initially believed he'd been "dazzled" by bright sunlight, and made an emergency call for help. He then realized that something more serious was happening. RAF Wing Commander Paul Gerrard was just finishing a training flight nearby and was drafted in to help the stricken pilot. Gerrard located the plane, began flying close to it and radioed directions.  "Landing an aircraft literally blind needs someone to be r...

Societies and Cultures rise and fall based on how dear the hold to what “God has established as truth”. If we reject the truth, we will fall for one lie or another; Heaven’s Gate is the extreme, but yet still true story. Heaven's Gate was the name of a  bizarre cult  of internet web designers who believed they could ride a spaceship behind Haley's comet if they all killed themselves simultaneously. Thirty-eight cult members, plus Applewhite, the cult's leader, were found dead in a rented mansion in the upscale  San Diego  community of Rancho Santa Fe, California, on March 26, 1997. The mass death of the Heaven's Gate group is one of the most widely-known examples of cult suicide. In preparing to kill themselves, members of the cult drank citrus juices to ritually cleanse their bodies of impurities. The suicide was accomplished by ingestion of phenobarbital mixed with vodka, along with plastic bags secured around their heads to induce asphyxiation. They were...

"You" said the doctor to the patient, "are in terrible shape." You've got to do something about it. First, tell your wife she’s going to have to change and start cooking more nutritious meals. You need to stop working like a dog. Also, inform your wife you're going to change & make a budget and she has to stick to it. And have her keep the kids off your back so you can relax. Unless there are some changes like that in your life, you'll probably be dead in a month." "Doc," the patient said, "this would sound more official coming from you. Could you please call my wife and give her those instructions?" When the fellow got home, his wife rushed to him. "I talked to your doctor," she wailed. Pretending like he didn’t know what he had called to tell her, he asked “oh, what did he say” he can’t wait to hear, {I have to change, I have to start budgeting, cooking healthier meals”} The wife did not answer, honey what did the...

One spring our family was driving from  Fort Lauderdale  to  Tampa ,  Florida . As far as the eye could see, orange trees were loaded with fruit. When we stopped for breakfast, I ordered orange juice with my eggs. "I'm sorry," the waitress said. "I can't bring you orange juice. Our machine is broken." At first I was dumbfounded. We were surrounded by millions of oranges and I knew they had oranges in the kitchen--orange slices garnished our plates. What was the problem? No juice? Hardly. We were surrounded by thousands of gallons of juice. The problem was they had become dependent on a machine to get it. Christians are sometimes like that. They may be surrounded by Bibles in their homes, but if something should happen to the Sunday morning preaching service, they would have no nourishment for their souls. The problem is not a lack of spiritual food, but that many Christians haven't grown enough to know how to get it for themselves.

In The Last Days Newsletter, Leonard Ravenhill tells about a group of tourists visiting a picturesque village who walked by an old man sitting beside a fence. In a rather patronizing way, one tourist asked, "Were any great men born in this village?" The old man replied, "Nope, only babies."    A frothy question brought a profound answer. There are no instant heroes, whether in this world or in the kingdom of God.

​ Eric Liddell became a Christian and when he heard that his event in the Summer Olympics was going to take place on a Sunday, do you know what he said, "NO can do!", Sunday is church and I don’t miss church for anything. Everyone said “this is what you live for”!  ​ And Eric said "no it's not, I live for Jesus!!”  So he ended up running in the 400 meter race, an event that he didn't even train for; and won the gold! But that's not the most amazing part of the story....the most amazing part is...Eric Liddell took his gold medal and moved on to better things, to be a missionary in China.

A river must have water pouring into it or it becomes stagnant. Not only does new life stop flowing into that river but everything that is in that river begins to die. The church is no different. The moment a church gives up on reaching other souls, is content to just exist with the members it has and not contend for new life, it signs it's own death warrant. New life must be flowing into a church for it to survive; otherwise it becomes stagnant and even the life that is in that church, will begin to die. Jesus' promise was, "out of you will flow rivers of living water". "

Six persons were killed and three seriously injured when a three-storey shopping complex caved in on Wednesday. The incident occurred around noon. Police said construction work was in progress on the top floor of the building -- located in the City Centre complex of the New Industrial Township -- when it collapsed. Most of the victims were laborers.Several people are feared to be trapped inside the building. Rescue operations were hampered for a while in the evening by the rain. "We have recovered six dead bodies. Three injured have also been rescued. Rescue operations are on. As of now, we can't say how many people are trapped inside," said Praveen Kumar, Deputy Commissioner, Faridabad. "The upper storey suddenly began crumbling on top of me," said Satya Dev, a laborer from Nalanda in Bihar, who has been working inside. Dev got away unscathed, but others were not so lucky. "Another laborer Sunil who was working right next to me got buried under the debris,...

     One of Wycliffe’s followers, John Hus, actively promoted Wycliffe’s ideas: that people should be permitted to read the Bible in their own language, and they should oppose the tyranny of the Roman church that threatened anyone possessing a non-Latin Bible with execution. Hus was burned at the stake in~1415, with Wycliffe’s manuscript Bibles used as kindling for the fire. The last words of John Hus were that, “ in 100 years, God will raise up a man whose calls for reform cannot be suppressed. ” Almost exactly 100 years later, in~1517, Martin Luther nailed his famous 95 Theses of Contention (a list of 95 issues of heretical theology and crimes of the Roman Catholic Church) into the church door at  Wittenberg . The prophecy of Hus had come true! Martin Luther went on to be the first person to translate and publish the Bible in the commonly-spoken dialect of the German people; a translation more appealing than previous German Biblical translations.     ...