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ANSWERS TO THE QUIZ

1) How long did the Hundred Years War last? *116 years
2) Which country makes Panama hats? *Ecuador
3) From which animal do we get cat gut? *Sheep and Horses
4) In which month do Russians celebrate the October
Revolution? *November
5) What is a camel's hair brush made of? *Squirrel fur
6) The Canary Islands in the Pacific are named after what
animal? *Dogs
7) What was King George VI's first name? *Albert
8) What color is a purple finch? *Crimson
9) Where are Chinese gooseberries from? *New Zealand

What do you mean you failed? Pass this on to some other geniuses
and see how they do.
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It will be hard to forget some of the most heartbreaking images of the
end of the 20th Century - like those tens of thousands of Kosovo refugees
fleeing from the attacks of Serbian soldiers and police. Day after day, we
would hear reports on the news of how many more refugees had arrived on the
Albanian or Macedonian border, how many were jammed into makeshift camps,
desperate for food, for water, for shelter, for a feeling of being human
again. Most of the major networks had correspondents on the scene who would
report from that sea of humanity and misery. In a moment of disarming
honesty, one reporter said, "When you cover a tragedy like this, you have to
put up a steel wall to protect yourself or you can't do your job." But then
he went on to say, "But I have to confess to you, suddenly today my steel
wall came down and I just lost it."

Maybe it's time for your steel wall to come down. If it does, you'll be
on your way to having a heart like your Savior's.

Our word for today from the Word of God is from Matthew 9, beginning
in verse 35. It's about a heart that feels what others are too busy or too
hard to feel. It says, "Jesus went through all the towns and villages ...
preaching the good news of the kingdom and healing every disease and
sickness. When He saw the crowds, He had compassion on them, because they
were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd."

Now, the original Greek version of this passage reveals how deep
Jesus' feelings really were. That Greek word for "had compassion" is
actually rooted in the word for "entrails." In other words, when Jesus saw
the need of these people, something happened way down deep inside the very
deepest parts of His heart. He wants to give you a heart like His. And in
the stress and pressures and superficiality of the world we live in, it's
easy to inadvertently build a steel wall that keeps us from feeling the
lostness of the people around us. But when you lose that, you've lost an
essential part of what it means to have a Christ-like heart.

Yes, there are people who care too much. They make every burden
their burden, and they end up burning out because they didn't turn those
burdens over to Jesus, because they tried to make every need their concern
instead of focusing on one or two and making a real difference in those.

But the far more common heart problem is not overcaring, it's
undercaring. Most of us need to let the wall around us come down - to pray
this transforming prayer, "Lord Jesus, help me see what You see when you see
my neighbor, my co-worker, my friend, the people around me who have no
relationship with You." See, even in ministry, it's easy to lose the broken
heart that brought you into ministry in the first place. What once was
passion can become just profession. You do most of the same things, but the
passion is gone.

I heard recently of an urban pastor who often waited until sermon
time to come to the platform. One Sunday, though, he wasn't there at sermon
time. So, two deacons went back to the pastor's office and they found him
looking out his window at the nearby houses and crying. One deacon said,
"Pastor, you're weeping over the needs of the people in this neighborhood,
aren't you?" The pastor said, "No. I'm weeping because it doesn't move me
like it used to."

Maybe that's you. Let the wall come down. Let Jesus put a piece of
His caring, broken heart in you. Let Him help you see what He sees, feel
what He feels for the people around you - for some people with a need He
wants you to do something about. Living with your heart open makes every day
a mission and every day a holy adventure. (Ron Hutchcraft)

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To find out how you can begin a personal relationship with
Jesus Christ, please visit YOURS FOR LIFE: HOW TO
HAVE LIFE'S MOST IMPORTANT RELATIONSHIP at:

1-888-NEED HIM.
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SEVERAL KINDS OF DOCTORS.....

There are several kinds of doctors, and it is told that they
can be differentiated by the following method:

General Practitioners know nothing and do little.

Surgeons know little and do everything.

Internists knows everything and do nothing.

Pathologists know everything and can do everything, but it's
usually too late.


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{Not amalgamated with 'Thought & Humor'}


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Dismembering the Law: The Rise of 'Antijural Jurisprudence'


A few years ago, a film called THE TRUMAN SHOW came out. It featured a
man in his thirties whose entire life from the moment of his birth had
been filmed and -- unbeknownst to him -- watched by a vast television
audience twenty-four hours a day. The small town he lived in was
actually a giant movie set. The people he thought were family and
friends were actors. He had the illusion of living a normal life in a
normal town -- but it was just that: an illusion.

It was a fascinating movie -- and it also serves as an illustration of
what's happening to our democracy.

We Americans think we enjoy self-government. We have all the trappings
of self-government, like elections. But in reality, we have gradually
lost many of our rights to govern ourselves. We have the form of
self-government, but only some of the substance. We are, in a sense, a
nation run by a handful of judges who often enforce, not the law, but
their personal opinions.

A case in point: Beginning in 1997, federal judges began ruling on a
series of state laws enacted to outlaw a barbaric abortion procedure
called partial-birth abortion. As Hadley Arkes, a moral philosopher at
Amherst College, writes in his excellent new book, NATURAL RIGHTS AND
THE RIGHT TO CHOOSE, these laws were written with great care -- yet,
predictably, abortionists went to court, claiming the statutes were
confusing. In crediting their claims and being willing to act on them,
Arkes writes, "judges had to be willing to break from the conventions
that defined quite sharply in the past the 'ethic' of judges in a
democracy."

In a democratic regime, Arkes explains, judges are supposed to confine
themselves to cases in which the law is actually being enforced on
particular persons -- "cases and controversies," as the Constitution
calls them. But in these cases, abortionists simply said they were
confused by the statute. And if judges are "willing to pass judgment on
a statute, without the occasion of a case, then the judges" cast
themselves in the role of legislators: "Lacking any record of a case,
they would simply" vote on their sense of whether the legislation was
desirable or constitutional.

And in fact, the judges "would be legislators on a more exalted plane,"
as Arkes puts it. In striking down a statute, their own votes would
override the votes of lawmakers who, representing millions of citizens,
had passed the law.

This kind of power has always been viewed as deeply problematic.
In a democracy, a sense of propriety obliges judges to work under
a discipline that confines the reach of their power. So long as judges
use restraint, power remains in the hands of the people elected to office.

But these were the very constraints judges willingly threw off in the
partial-birth abortion cases. Judges found a reason to strike down
every single law without exception. And, Arkes writes, they would not
even bother to justify this extraordinary unconcern for the restraints
on their office.

We need to be concerned, not only about abortion, but all the issues
judges will be ruling on in the next decade. As citizens, we need to
insist that lawmakers confirm judges who are willing to exercise
judicial restraint. If we don't, we may one day end up in our own
TRUMAN SHOW -- living in what looks like a democracy, but is in
fact, a land run by judicial tyrants.
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