isaiah on Smoking

The renowned pianist Arthur Rubinstein (1887–1982), often hailed as one of the greatest musicians of all time, loved to share this humorous story about himself. Known for his gift of conversation—he s...

Tallulah Bankhead (1903-1968) was a flamboyant actress, whom one critic called “more an act than an actress.” At the opening-night party for a play in which she was performing, she got into an argumen...

Alcoholism is the only disease that you can get yelled at for having.

Sin is a suicidal action of the will upon itself. It is like taking an addicting drug. At first it may feel wonderful, but every time it gets harder to not do it again.

To get a sense of how breathing is regarded by modern medical professionals, think back to your last check-up. Chances are your doctor took your blood pressure, pulse, and temperature, then placed a s...

I see my past drinking as a behavioral problem, a learned response to dealing (or not dealing) with emotional pain and stress. Once I achieved the excavation of my wounds, I no longer lived with the s...

The fire of sin is intense, but it is put out by a small amount of tears, for the tear puts out a furnace of faults, and cleans our wounds of sin.

Trivia time! What natural disaster is the most destructive to a forest? Chances are that the first thing that comes to mind is a forest fire. After all, fire is pure destruction to plants. What possib...

Refiner’s fires are used on precious metals, not for mundane elements. The refiner must hold the metal in the hottest part of the fire in order to burn off all the impurities, thus retrieving a pure...

Psychiatrist James Knight describes in graphic detail the experience that members of Alcoholics Anonymous experience: These persons have had their lives laid bare and pushed to the brink of destructi...

According to Bill Tripp, a member of the Karuk tribe in Northern California and a forest manager, Fire is that which renews life. A lot of people have been conditioned to look at it as a threat and...

And of some sinful pleasure they say "Let me have but this and I'll take the consequences": little dreaming how damnation will spread back and back into their past and contaminate the pl...

A few years ago, a journalist named Joseph Blackman wrote an Op Ed on an interesting subject, “Why Clubs are Dark.” That is, why is it when you walk into a nightclub or a bar, the lights are off, or a...

You called, shouted, broke through my deafness; you flared, blazed, banished my blindness; you lavished your fragrance, I gasped; and now I pant for you; I tasted you, and now I hunger and thirst; you...

The saying used to be that the secret to a long, healthy life was to choose your parents well. But today we know that only about 20 percent of a person’s health is due to genetics, and about 20 percen...

Remember Miss Haversham in Charles Dickens's Great Expectations? Her entire life was defined by the fact that she was jilted on her wedding day. People can become very attached to their pain and i...

Classically, there are three ways in which humans try to find transcendence--religious meaning--apart from God as revealed through the cross of Jesus: through the ecstasy of alcohol and drugs, through...

It takes a great deal of freedom and love to be therapeutic with a group. Many years ago when Emil Brunner, the great Swiss theologian, was lecturing in this country, it was reported that when he prea...

Every sin is an attempt to fly from emptiness.

​Living God Holy Inferno Who revealed yourself as Burning Bush Pillar of Flame Dancing Tongues of Fire Illumine your children, so we may know your will Refine your children, till our souls burn to do...

Better to light one candle than to curse the darkness.

On November 28, 1942, a fire broke out and spread rapidly through an overcrowded Boston nightclub called Cocoanut Grove (the owner’s spelling), whose sole exit became blocked. A total of 492 people di...

Human speech is like a cracked kettle on which we tap crude rhythms for bears to dance to, while we long to make music that will melt the stars.

Restlessness keeps the pedal to the metal. To offer a suggestive analogy in this vein: several years ago there was a recall on some Toyota vehicles. Evidently the cars would be given to sudden and unc...

According to a 2006 report by the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, each year approximately 5,000 young people under the age of twenty-one die as a result of underage drinking (appro...

The psalmist describes the experience of “keeping silent” about sin as a kind of disintegration. His bones turn to powder (Ps. 32:3). His energy dissipates, “the very pith of my body decomposed as if ...

Locked into captivity by an airplane seat, a kindly disposition of keeping a friend company, or a telephone connection, we become ex officio confessors to those with troubled consciences and traces, o...

Never, never will we desist till we extinguish every trace of this bloody traffic, of which our posterity, looking back to the history of these enlightened times will scarce believe that it has been s...

Sometimes, of course, the sense of God with us becomes much more distinct. My oldest brother, J. I. Willard, served for over thirty years as a minister under the blessing of God. But his entry into th...

In the last resort it is highly improbable that there could ever be a therapy which gets rid of all difficulties. Man needs difficulties; they are necessary for health.