Best movies and TV shows…

In my opinion, The West Wing is the best television series ever written—and I’m not a Democrat. And Aaron Sorkin is one of the best script writers around today. The show tackled the spectrum of moral and political issues and neither flinched nor loaded the dice. As a conservative, I never felt abused, something I can’t even say for FOX News.

Other faves, not in any particular order include:

• Nero Wolfe, by Rex Stout, with Timothy Hutton, Maury Chaykin and Kari Matchett never should have left the air
• Doc Martin
• Leverage
• Rizolli & Isles
• Blue Bloods (a traditional-values cop show in our progressive, politically correct culture? Pray that it stays under the radar)
• Warehouse 13, just fun
• Lost
• Kingdom, with Stephen Fry
• Disney’s Alice in Wonderland and The Song of the South (tough, but not impossible to find, despite the best efforts by the PC minority to pretend it never existed
• Monsters, Inc.
• Who Framed Roger Rabbit?
• The Mask (Jim Carrey)
• The Wizard of Oz
• Anne of Green Gables, the sequel and continuing story with Megan Follows, the definitive Anne. Yes, I love chick flics.
• The Maltese Falcon
• Casablanca
• The Bourne trilogy
• Ocean’s 11, 12, 13
• The Ghost Writer, starring Ewan McGregor, ‘cause I am one
• Hidalgo
• Horatio Hornblower series, with Ioan Gruffudd
• The Illusionist
• The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
• The Mummy & The Mummy Returns (Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz)
• The Lord of the Rings trilogy
• The Chronicles of Narnia
• Star Wars (Original Trilogy, NOT Prequel Trilogy)
• Poirot (David Suchet is the definitive Belgian detective)
• Sherlock Holmes (the late Jeremy Brett was the definitive world’s first consulting detective, though I cut my teeth on Basil Rathborn)
• National Treasure
• Night in a Museum
• Sahara (love Steve Zahn)
• That Thing You Do (Zahn again, but it wouldn’t work without Tom Hanks, Liv Tyler, Tom Everett Scott and the rest)
• All Johnny Depp’s Pirates flics so far and most of his other works, especially his Charlie and the Chocolate Factory remake, Alice in Wonderland reinterpretation, Finding Neverland, and Benny and Joon. Not so much some of the seamier ones, but a guy’s gotta live
• Chicken Run, The Curse of the Were Rabbit, A Matter of Loaf and Death, the Wallace & Gromit trilogy, Shawn the Sheep, Creature Comforts (starring the great British public)—just about everything made of clay by Nick Park and the rest of the Aardman team
• The African Queen
• Emma
• Mansfield Park
• Northanger Abbey
• Persuasion
• Sense & Sensibility
• Pride & Prejudice
• Jane Eyre, with Charlotte Gainsbourg, William Hurt, and Joan Plowright (as I said, lots of chick flics)
• Dramatizations by the BBC and others of Charles Dickens: Bleak House, David Copperfield, Dombey and Son, Great Expectations, Hard Times, Martin Chuzzlewit, Nicholas Nickleby, The Old Curiousity Shop, Oliver Twist, Our Mutual Friend, The Pickwick Papers, and A Tale of Two Cities (both Masterpiece Theatre and Ronald Coleman’s 1935 interpretation). Chuck’s my main squeeze.
• Henry V – Kenneth Branaugh’s interpretations of Shakespeare replaced Sir Lawrence Olivier in my heart. He and ex-spouse Emma Thompson gave us the definitive Much Ado about Nothing. And Hamlet! A casting miracle that collected the best talent in the world, not just to choke the marquee with big names and clutter the film with cameos, but bringing to the screen the Shakespeare in each of them. Veterans of the Bard like John Gielgud, Judy Dench, Derek Jacobi, and John Mills. Atypical surprises like Billy Crystal as the First Gravedigger, Julie Christie as Gertrude, Charlton Heston as the Player King, Jack Lemmon as Marcellus, Kate Winslet as Ophelia, Frank Morgan (the Wizard of Oz) as Pyrrhus (who knew?), and (nobody saw this coming) Robin Williams, for crying out loud, as Osric. It was also great to see Timothy Spall, who I first encountered as the definitive Mr. Venus in Our Mutual Friend and was delighted to see over and over again—Rosencrantz in Hamlet, the voice of Nick in Chicken Run, the delightful Charles Cheeryble in Nicholas Nickleby, and the inimitable Winston Churchill in The King’s Speech
• Downton Abbey
• Cranford
• Joan of Arc, starring Leelee Sobieski. You really need to read Mark Twain’s Joan of Ark. They say he fell in love with her over the years that he researched the book.
• Moby Dick (1956). Fantastic sermon preached in the Whaler’s Chapel in New Bedford by Orson Welles from the Book of Job! According to cinematographer Oswald Morris in his autobiography, Huston, We Have A Problem, Moby Dick was 75ft long and weighed 12 tons. and required 80 drums of compressed air and a hydraulic system in order to remain afloat and operational. However the artificial whale came loose from its tow-line and drifted away in a fog. Peck confirmed that he was aboard the prop in May, 1995, when he spoke at the Barter Theatre in Virginia. According to Morris, after the prop was lost the Pequod was followed by a barge with various whale parts (hump, back, fin, tail). 90% of the shots of the white whale are various size miniatures filmed in a water tank in Shepperton Studios in London. Whales and longboat models were built by a special effects man, August Lohman, working in conjunction with art director Stephen Grimes. Studio shots also included a life-size Moby jaw and head – with working eyes. The head apparatus which could move like a rocking horse was employed when actors were in the water with the whale. Gregory Peck’s last speech is delivered in the studio while riding the white whale’s hump (a hole was drilled in the side of the whale so Peck could conceal his real leg).
• Many of the Abbott & Costello movies
• The Egg & I
• Any movie with Red Skelton, except The Five Pennies
• Just about any movie with Dick Powell, particularly The Thin Man series
• A Christmas Carol (Alec Guinness, 1951)
• The Horse’s Mouth (Alec Guinness, 1958)
• Marx Brothers movies
• No Time for Sergeants
• The Princess Bride
• Hollywood Canteen, 1945
• Arsenic and Old Lace, 1944 with Cary Grant
• Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House, 1948 with Cary Grant
• My Favorite Spy, Bob Hope
• A Song Is Born, Danny Kaye
• Around the World, My Favorite Spy (totally different from the Bob Hope flic of the same name), You’ll Find Out, Swing Fever, and That’s Right, You’re Wrong with Kay Kyser
• Jeeves & Wooster. Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry are definitely the definitive Jeeves and Wooster, with a nod to Arthur Treacher in Thank You, Jeeves and Step Lively, Jeeves
• Most anything with Sandra Bullock
• Foyle’s War series
• Fiddler on the Roof
• Cadfael series, starring Sir Derek Jacobi
• Charlie Chan with Warner Oland or even Roland Winters, but Oland was the best
• Campion series, with Peter Davison and Brian Glover
• Inspector Allyn series, with William Simons
• Miss Marple series, with Joan Hickson or Julia McKenzie or Margaret Rutherford
• Lord Peter Wimsey, with Ian Carmichael and/or Edward Petherbridge and Harriet Vane
• Miss Withers series, with Edna may Oliver or Zasu Pitts or Helen Broderick
• It’s a Wonderful Life,  James Stewart
• Harvey, James Stewart
• Little Shop around the Corner, James Stewart

 

Drought ends!

The drought is over here in the Dallas/Ft.Worth area, a sign in the natural that we are also beginning to emerge from our spiritual drought, and God’s living water is beginning to flow from his people once again.

God has promised that one day soon people will come to Dallas/Ft. Worth from all over the world to touch the heart of the Father and experience his fatherly love, affection and healing. But even more than that is on the horizon. He has said that the Holy Spirit, like the tsunami that devastated Indonesia several years ago, will soon release a spiritual tsunami that will rise up suddenly, cover the planet and leave life in its wake instead of death. There is still time to pursue the Lord, prepare ourselves, and position ourselves to ride that wave!

HOUSTON (AP) 02-02-2012 — For millions of residents in the Dallas area, one of the most severe droughts in Texas history is no longer a concern — for now.

The weekly U.S. Drought Monitor map posted online Thursday classifies the Dallas-Fort Worth area as officially out of drought for the first time since July, making it Texas’ first major metropolitan area to emerge from the most severe one-year drought in state history. It will likely trigger a lifting of water restrictions for the more than 3 million people who live in the recovering area, which extends north and northeast to Texas’ border with Oklahoma and Arkansas.

But meteorologists and climatologists warn the situation remains precarious. Nearly 60 percent of the state remains in severe or exceptional stages of drought and a drier-than-normal spring or hotter-than-usual summer could quickly tip wetter areas back into drought.

“It’s still a very tenuous situation,” said National Weather Service meteorologist Victor Murphy. “Water concerns are a high priority. If we have a dry spring and a hot summer it will be very perilous situation.”

The Drought Monitor is a map that is compiled by the University of Nebraska’s National Drought Mitigation Center in cooperation with the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and several other agencies. Meteorologists and climate experts look at everything from rainfall to soil saturation to create the map, and sometimes look at trends dating back months and years, said Brian Fuchs, a climatologist with the center who helps author the Drought Monitor.

The current trend is encouraging, he said, but still not ideal.

“Does it help? Yes, it does. But does it mean conditions are where they were pre drought? No,” Fuchs said.

Drought descended on Texas, parts of Oklahoma, Arkansas, New Mexico and Louisiana about a year ago. Since then, the region has seen rainfall decline in some places to half the norm, or even less.

For Texas, the situation has been especially dire because of its size. The state makes up nearly 7 percent of the continental United States and the severity of the drought has an effect on the entire country, affecting everything from cattle numbers to bird migration and the health of the Gulf of Mexico.

Texas ranchers have culled their herds, causing a significant drop in the nation’s cattle population that will likely cause beef prices to rise in the coming years. Meanwhile, hay prices have spiked because it is nearly nonexistent in the south and farmers and ranchers in these regions are willing to pay a high price to bring it in from elsewhere.

 

Drought

Many experts say America has been suffering the worst drought since the infamous Dust Bowl of the ‘30s.

“The heat and the drought are so bad in this southwest corner of Georgia,” wrote the New York Times last summer, “that hogs can barely eat. Corn, a lucrative crop with a notorious thirst, is burning up in fields. Cotton plants are too weak to punch through soil so dry it might as well be pavement….

“The pain has spread across 14 states, from Florida, where severe water restrictions are in place, to Arizona, where ranchers could be forced to sell off entire herds of cattle because they simply cannot feed them…. The question, of course, becomes why.”

The Jews asked the same question back in the sixth century b.c. after their return to Jerusalem from Babylonian exile.

They had begun to rebuild the Temple that was destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar about 70 years earlier. But the locals opposed them, and they stopped building God’s house and turned their attention to building their own.

“The time has not yet come for the Lord’s house to be built,” they said.

Then God sent a drought.

In 720 b.c., through a prophet named Haggai, God suggested that the people “Give careful thought to your ways. You have planted much, but have harvested little. You eat, but never have enough. You drink, but never have your fill. You put on clothes, but are not warm. You earn wages, only to put them in a purse with holes in it….because of you the heavens have withheld their dew and the earth its crops. I called for a drought on the fields and the mountains, on the grain, the new wine, the oil and whatever the ground produces, on men and cattle, and on the labor of your hands.”

Then, God said, “You expected much, but see, it turned out to be little. What you brought home, I blew away. Why?” declares the Lord Almighty. “Because of my house, which remains a ruin, while each of you is busy with his own house.”

The Bible teaches us that what we see in the natural is often a reflection of what is happening in the spiritual realm.

Just as there is a physical drought in our land, the Church has been experiencing a spiritual drought.

In Israel, when God dried the fields and withered the vines, there was not enough for grain and wine offerings. Because the sheep and cattle could find little to eat, Levitical worship and sacrifice were impeded.

So too, the Church has dried out. Living water no longer flows from us to the nations. Our worship is dry and shallow. Our prayers are rote. Instead of being the counter-culture God has called us to be—salt and light, a city on a hill—we have become little more than a subculture, an annoyance, a joke. Powerless and empty.

Why? Because we have left off building God’s house, his kingdom, and poured all our efforts into building our own lives. A glance at most Christian bookstore reveals shelf after shelf of self-help books. Our resources are pumped into mega-building projects and social programs for church-goers. We’ve exchanged discipleship for development.

You can read the result in the headlines. Just as the absence of light is the direct cause of darkness, the abdication of the Church is the direct cause of an increasingly dysfunctional world.

We were created by God to be fruitful and increase in number, not just through procreation but by making disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything God has commanded us. We are to fill the earth and subdue it, not as tyrants, not by force or politics, but by revealing the goodness of our Father and reflecting the love of his Son.

“Go up into the mountains and bring down timber and build the house,” the Lord told Israel, “so that I may take pleasure in it and be honored. I am with you.”

Those last four words are the one thing that sets Christians apart from anyone else on earth. Not our Bible, worship, teaching, purity, or anything else. Our only distinctive is the manifest presence of God.

In the day of Haggai, the Lord Almighty said, “In a little while I will once more shake the heavens and the earth, the sea and the dry land. I will shake all nations, and the desired of all nations will come, and I will fill this house with glory. The silver is mine and the gold is mine. The glory of this present house will be greater than the glory of the former house. And in this place I will grant peace.”

Have you noticed? Everything that can be shaken in the world—and in your life—is being shaken, so that what cannot be shaken will remain.

The Lord is calling us to take our eyes off ourselves—off our circumstances and needs and faults and mistakes—and put them on him. He is urging us to stop trying to help ourselves, stop trying to build ourselves up, and begin again to build his kingdom.

“But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.”

When we apply ourselves to discipleship, to building his kingdom, God will see to the rest. And we will have all the resources we need, for all the silver and gold on the planet belongs to our Father.

And the glory of the Church in these latter days will be greater than the glory of the early Church.

 

Copy cat

Therefore, whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. And who ever welcomes a little child like this in my name welcomes me. Matthew 18:4-5

Johnny’s mother looked out the window and noticed him playing church with their cat. He had the cat sitting quietly and he was preaching to it.

She smiled and went about her work.

A while later, she heard loud meowing and hissing and ran back to the open window to see Johnny baptizing the cat in a tub of water.

She called out, “Johnny, stop that! The cat is afraid of water!”

Johnny looked up at her and said, “He should have thought about that before he joined my church.”

 

Boardroom psychics or prophets?

Among the suits seated around many Fortune 500 boardroom tables, indeed in power centers throughout the United States and Europe, it is increasingly common to find highly-paid intuitionists, what late night hotlines still call psychics.

Psychics have been used, for example, by the likes of Hanover Insurance, Polaroid, Pillsbury, and KFC.

Newsweek magazine, in an article entitled “The $10,000-a-Month Psychic,” reported that “when Seagate Technology, the $11 billion-a-year maker of hard drives for the Playstation 3 and Microsoft Xbox, went searching for a consultant to run one of its management workshops in the fall of 2006, it bypassed the usual list of Silicon Valley gurus” and hired New York intuitionist Laura Day.

“Day is one of a small but expanding cadre of corporate psychic consultants—the professionalized face of an occupation better known for hokey headscarves and crystal balls. Rebranded as ‘intuitionists’ or ‘mentalists’—terms more palatable to mainstream America—psychic advisers in recent years have been crossing over into the world of legitimate business, where they are used by decision makers in law, finance and entertainment looking for an edge in a down economy.”

Psychic Victoria Weston “specializes in business, investments, and career readings” and “teaches executives how to tap into their own power of intuition to make successful marketing strategies, investments, and hiring the right employee.”

“Today’s clients might include a corporate executive seeking mega-psychic guidance about business policy, personnel, and new products,” says psychic Shirlee Teabo. “I can see six months ahead.”

And “America’s SuperPsychic®,”  Psychic Wendy “serves as a medium, and does stock market predictions, and real estate evaluations.” According to her promotional literature, Wendy “accurately predicts front page, cover story events concerning world affairs, world leaders, celebrities, social trends and the exact timing of major Wall Street moves.”

Yet, despite the growing pool of professional seers, the marketplace continues its downward spiral:

• Bernie Ebbers, Worldcom CEO, convicted of an $11 billion accounting fraud
• Bernie Madoff, pulled off a $65 billion Ponzi scheme
• Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling, Enron CEOs, convicted of fraud and conspiracy
• Dennis Kozlowski, Tyco International, Inc. CEO busted for massive misappropriations of funds (the company paid for his $30 million NYC apartment and $6,000 shower curtains)
• John Rigas, Adelphi Communications Corporation CEO, convicted of bank, wire, and securities fraud
• Joe Nacchhio, CEO of Qwest International and James McDermott, Jr., CEO of Keefe, Bruyette & Woods convicted of insider trading
• ImClone CEO Sam Waksal, convicted of securities fraud, bank fraud, obstruction of justice, and perjury
• Sam Israel, CEO of the Bayou Group hedge fund, convicted of defrauding investors of $450 million, then faked his own suicide, making him liable for an extra decade behind bars.

This is not to imply that they all used psychics or that boardroom psychics are to blame for Wall Street corruption.

The point is that what God’s people abandon, the devil occupies. What we forsake, he takes. The cause of darkness is the absence of light.

For centuries, the five-fold ministry described in Ephesians has been only a three-fold ministry, with pastors heading the list, followed by evangelists and teachers. But, for decades, God has been restoring the apostolic and prophetic, training them and preparing them in their own cave of Addulam, winnowing the weak, false, and double-minded. Now he is ready to release his mighty men and women into the Church and into the world.

Today, God’s business men and women are strategically placed throughout the global marketplace—in leadership and support positions. In countries no missionary can enter. In places of tremendous power and influence. In control of immense resources.

For the most part, they have been left on their own, undiscipled by the Church. Many have adopted the ways of the world, embracing and practicing its principles, just as government leaders have done, resulting in a planet on the verge of bankruptcy.

But the God of Israel who brought forth a nation in a day can quickly reverse the global economy, resolve the global leadership crisis, and reveal cures and solutions we can’t even imagine.

The Church will soon be radically transformed by an unprecedented move of the Holy Spirit. God’s transformed people will in turn transform people. We will become a world-changing counter culture, instead of an annoying subculture, displacing the “nations”—the business community, government, media, arts and entertainment, the education establishment—that have rejected God.

“The nations you will dispossess listen to those who practice sorcery or divination,” the Lord told Israel and tells us today. Soon, the mountains will be moved or removed, and their kings and priests will no longer seek soothsayers, psychics and sorcerers. They will seek the counsel of men and women who know God. And God’s people will transform leaders, thereby transforming corporations, industries, and economies.

God promises that those who hunger and thirst for righteousness will be filled.

There is still time to prepare yourself for the days and months ahead, to be the mighty man or mighty woman of God you were created and called to be.

Position yourself in Christ. Pray for passion, and pursue personal purity. Pray for the fear of the Lord. Ask God to cause a holy wrath to rise in you against the sins that put you at cross-purposes with the Father, and ask for ruthless determination to crush them out of your life.

Force your way into God’s Word, and ask the Lord, according to Ephesians, to give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. Ask that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you; the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and his incomparably great power for us who believe.

Then watch. And listen. And trust.

 

Word of the Lord for 2012

Praise the Lord. Blessed is the man who fears the Lord, who finds great delight in his commands.

His children will be mighty in the land; the generation of the upright will be blessed.

Wealth and riches are in his house, and his righteousness endures forever.

Even in darkness light dawns for the upright, for the gracious and compassionate and righteous man. Good will come to him who is generous and lends freely, who conducts his affairs with justice. He will have no fear of bad news; his heart is steadfast, trusting in the Lord. His heart is secure, he will have no fear; in the end he will look in triumph on his foes.

He has scattered abroad his gifts to the poor, his righteousness endures forever; his horn will be lifted high in honor.

The wicked man will see and be vexed, he will gnash his teeth and waste away; the longings of the wicked will come to nothing.

Psalm 112

 

New from Kindle!

My latest book, The Gospel according to Dracula — a Bible study, is now available exclusively at Amazon Kindle AND is available for Kindle owners at Amazon’s cool new Kindle Owners’ Lending Library.

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Membership in Amazon Prime is $79 a year, but you can sign up for a FREE test month to see if you like the benefits, which include FREE two-day shipping on millions of items, no minimum order size, and unlimited instant streaming of thousands of movies and TV shows with Prime instant videos in addition to the new lending library.

And, of course, your FREE test month is an ideal time to borrow The Gospel according to Dracula, curl up in front of the fireplace or wrapped in your favorite snuggly (with perhaps just a tiny clove of garlic at hand), and listen for the not-so-distant howling of wolves.

 

Who needs Christians?

A man buys a packet of seeds and plants them. If they grow and become a lush, fragrant garden, who gets the praise?

And if they are sparse and stunted, who is responsible?

We are the gardeners of our lives, responsible for everything that flourishes or fails, just as Adam and Eve were responsible for tending Eden. Before they sinned, they were landscape architects, planting and pruning and arranging. Everything was perfect. No pests, pesticides, or plagues.

But man’s fall from grace cursed the ground. For the first time, the earth produced thorns and thistles. And man’s delightful work became painful toil.

The world is still God’s garden. The Church is still his gardener.

While American voters and the media dissect the presidential candidates, shake their heads at another failed administration, and tremble in their boots with every blip in the Dow, the main problem—the Church—remains unresolved.

The Church is the manifest presence of God on earth. We were redeemed to say to the world, as Jesus said to Philip, “Anyone who has seen me, has seen the Father.”

Today, everything that has been sown throughout the world apart from God is bearing fruit and is ready for harvest. Likewise, everything that has been sown in agreement with and in obedience to God is bearing fruit and is also ready for harvest.

Harvest will be a time of great rejoicing, suffering, and conflict.

But the Church has a little time yet to increase the joy, lessen the suffering, and diminish the conflict. As the Church goes, so goes the world.

God is still calling us to repentance.

Will we remain deaf, ignorant, apathetic, lazy? Victims of a religious spirit? Worshipers of money and comfort? Deceived by the doctrines of men? Defensive of our godlessness?

To repent means to change our minds, to think differently, to think the way God thinks, to agree with God. That’s why he gave us the Bible. It’s all in there. Not just history and stories but the very mind of Christ.

But the church has toiled in Garden Earth for so long trying to be good, or appear to be good, that it has lost sight of being Christ.

“Dear friends,” John wrote, “now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.”

The more clearly we see Jesus, the more like him we become.

“Everyone who has this hope in him purifies himself, just as he is pure.”

God is purifying his Church. He is purifying your life and mine and the life of anyone who is willing to change. He is turning up the heat through our circumstances and skimming off the dross, the impurities. Then he turns it up a little more and skims a little more, until we reflect our Father to the world.

Jesus said, “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”

A perfect rose garden is not a garden filled with perfect roses. It is a garden filled with only roses. No weeds or rocks, pests or peckish critters.

The world is out of answers, resources, and hope. One government is replaced with another that is worse. America’s problems will not be resolved by another administration. We could replace every politician in Washington and be no better off.

God has the answers. His answers for the world are his Son and his people. And his Son has already finished his part.

There is still time to clean out our gardens. But not much.

 

Are you afraid?

With record-breaking Black Friday sales of $52.4 billion, merchants and manufacturers are high-fiving all the way to the bank. But the banks are just as shaky today as they were on Thursday. And lots of observers continue to warn that the periodic up-tics are a death rattle, that our economy is hot on the heels of Greece, Italy, and the other European dominoes, and all that’s needed to trigger an unprecedented global economic collapse is a puff of wind.

Does Friday’s I’ll-pepper-spray-you sales spike mean we believe that the economy is okay again? Or was it a grab to get the most for the least amidst the growing fear that the dark financial pundits might be right?

The truth is that banks wrote off more than $70 billion in unpaid credit card debt from late 2008 through the end of last year, according to Moody’s Investor Services. But the big-box banks say the number of credit card defaults has begun to drop.

“There are a number of reasons for the low default and delinquency rates,” explains The Washington Post. “One is that card companies cut off millions of borrowers as they had trouble making payments when the housing crisis hit and unemployment started ratcheting higher.” In addition, “Consumers who defaulted on cards in the years from 2008 to 2010 have been unable to get new credit, which has helped to keep problem payment rates from rising.”

In short, the troubling statistics have simply been removed from the equation.

But it really doesn’t matter whether or not the world economy is about to tank. What matters is that we’re afraid it will. Afraid we may lose our job, home, credit, health, whatever.

The real danger is in our heart, not in our body or bank balance. But God offers an antidote to fear.

It’s called gratitude. In fact, ingratitude is the root of every sin ever committed by man.

When we stop giving thanks to God, our thinking becomes futile and our hearts are darkened. Although we claim to be wise, we become fools As a result, God gives us over to the sinful desires of our hearts. We become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity, full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. We become gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful. We invent ways of doing evil. We disobey our parents. We become senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Although we know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, we not only continue to do these very things but  also approve of those who practice them.

Sounds like the morning paper or primetime TV. And it all begins with ingratitude.

Ungrateful that they were created in God’s image and likeness and had been appointed Rulers of the World, Adam and Eve took a bite of fruit they thought would make them like God.

Israel was led in chains to Assyria because of ingratitude. Judah was dragged off to Babylon. Same affliction.

We commit adultery because we’re ungrateful for our spouse, steal because we’re ungrateful for what we have, murder because we are ungrateful for the life God’s Son died to redeem.

And that ingratitude opens wide the door to fear. We fear loss because we stop thanking God for all he has given us.

Contrariwise, the antidote to fear is gratitude.

Are you afraid?

Start today to thank God for everything you can think of. And when fear returns, do it again. And again. And again until you develop an “attitude of gratitude.”

“Be joyful always. Pray continually. Give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.”

God loves you and, like even an earthly father who holds and rocks and reassures his child after a nightmare, your Father does not want you to be afraid.

 

The writer’s art

Every computer geek is familiar with the principle of GIGO (garbage-in-garbage-out). The same principle applies to writing. If you want to write well, it helps to avoid a diet of literary junk food.

I personally lean toward the classics, but there are also many fine contemporary writers to choose from.

Charles Dickens is my main squeeze, and for good reason. Of the millions of books sold online, including the nation’s hottest titles, A Tale of Two Cities ranks 13,324 on the Amazon Best Seller list—after 152 years on the market! It has sold more than 200 million copies and ranks among he most famous works in the history of fictional literature. There have been at least five feature films based on the book, it has been immortalized by BBC Radio, and produced as half a dozen TV series and mini-series, four stage musicals, and an opera.

Or take his autobiographical David Copperfield. Nine movies, numerous TV adaptations, a musical animated version, plays and musicals.

For fans of detective fiction, it’s hard to beat wordsmiths like Margery Allingham (1904-1966), mistress of the simile and creator of the Albert Campion detective series. In More Work for the Undertaker, for example, she describes a character’s intelligence as “bright and direct as a bird’s glance,” two people arguing being “red as a Dutch cheese,” and an advisor to the Royal Treasury as having “wise sad eyes, which seem so often to go with a profound understanding of money.” Farther on, she describes a passionate detective inspector reading a bit of new evidence: “The typewritten sheets of blue paper vibrated like live things in his hands, and when they flapped over were as wild as washing on a line.”

Find the best, read the best, savor the best, and watch your writing improve.

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Got a few more minutes for a taste of genius? Behold how the masterful Mr. Dickens breathes life into blowing leaves in Martin Chuzzlewit:

The fallen leaves, with which the ground was strewn, gave forth a pleasant fragrance, and subduing all harsh sounds of distant feet and wheels created a repose in gentle unison with the light scattering of seed hither and thither by the distant husbandman, and with the noiseless passage of the plough as it turned up the rich brown earth, and wrought a graceful pattern in the stubbled fields. On the motionless branches of some trees, autumn berries hung like clusters of coral beads, as in those fabled orchards where the fruits were jewels; others stripped of all their garniture, stood, each the centre of its little heap of bright red leaves, watching their slow decay; others again, still wearing theirs, had them all crunched and crackled up, as though they had been burnt; about the stems of some were piled, in ruddy mounds, the apples they had borne that year; while others (hardy evergreens this class) showed somewhat stern and gloomy in their vigour, as charged by nature with the admonition that it is not to her more sensitive and joyous favourites she grants the longest term of life. Still athwart their darker boughs, the sunbeams struck out paths of deeper gold; and the red light, mantling in among their swarthy branches, used them as foils to set its brightness off, and aid the lustre of the dying day.

A moment, and its glory was no more. The sun went down beneath the long dark lines of hill and cloud which piled up in the west an airy city, wall heaped on wall, and battlement on battlement; the light was all withdrawn; the shining church turned cold and dark; the stream forgot to smile; the birds were silent; and the gloom of winter dwelt on everything.

An evening wind uprose too, and the slighter branches cracked and rattled as they moved, in skeleton dances, to its moaning music. The withering leaves no longer quiet, hurried to and fro in search of shelter from its chill pursuit; the labourer unyoked his horses, and with head bent down, trudged briskly home beside them; and from the cottage windows lights began to glance and wink upon the darkening fields.

Then the village forge came out in all its bright importance. The lusty bellows roared Ha ha! to the clear fire, which roared in turn, and bade the shining sparks dance gayly to the merry clinking of the hammers on the anvil. The gleaming iron, in its emulation, sparkled too, and shed its red-hot gems around profusely. The strong smith and his men dealt such strokes upon their work, as made even the melancholy night rejoice, and brought a glow into its dark face as it hovered about the door and windows, peeping curiously in above the shoulders of a dozen loungers. As to this idle company, there they stood, spellbound by the place, and, casting now and then a glance upon the darkness in their rear, settled their lazy elbows more at ease upon the sill, and leaned a little further in: no more disposed to tear themselves away than if they had been born to cluster round the blazing hearth like so many crickets.

Out upon the angry wind! how from sighing, it began to bluster round the merry forge, banging at the wicket, and grumbling in the chimney, as if it bullied the jolly bellows for doing anything to order. And what an impotent swaggerer it was too, for all its noise; for if it had any influence on that hoarse companion, it was but to make him roar his cheerful song the louder, and by consequence to make the fire burn the brighter, and the sparks to dance more gayly yet; at length, they whizzed so madly round and round, that it was too much for such a surly wind to bear; so off it flew with a howl giving the old sign before the ale-house door such a cuff as it went, that the Blue Dragon was more rampant than usual ever afterwards, and indeed, before Christmas, reared clean out of its crazy frame.

It was small tyranny for a respectable wind to go wreaking its vengeance on such poor creatures as the fallen leaves, but this wind happening to come up with a great heap of them just after venting its humour on the insulted Dragon, did so disperse and scatter them that they fled away, pell-mell, some here, some there, rolling over each other, whirling round and round upon their thin edges, taking frantic flights into the air, and playing all manner of extraordinary gambols in the extremity of their distress. Nor was this enough for its malicious fury; for not content with driving them abroad, it charged small parties of them and hunted them into the wheel wright’s saw-pit, and below the planks and timbers in the yard, and, scattering the sawdust in the air, it looked for them underneath, and when it did meet with any, whew! how it drove them on and followed at their heels!

The scared leaves only flew the faster for all this, and a giddy chase it was; for they got into unfrequented places, where there was no outlet, and where their pursuer kept them eddying round and round at his pleasure; and they crept under the eaves of houses, and clung tightly to the sides of hay-ricks, like bats; and tore in at open chamber windows, and cowered close to hedges; and, in short, went anywhere for safety.

But the oddest feat they achieved was, to take advantage of the sudden opening of Mr Pecksniff’s front-door, to dash wildly into his passage; whither the wind following close upon them, and finding the back-door open, incontinently blew out the lighted candle held by Miss Pecksniff, and slammed the front-door against Mr Pecksniff who was at that moment entering, with such violence, that in the twinkling of an eye he lay on his back at the bottom of the steps. Being by this time weary of such trifling performances, the boisterous rover hurried away rejoicing, roaring over moor and meadow, hill and flat, until it got out to sea, where it met with other winds similarly disposed, and made a night of it.