• Jesse James was shot in the back while adjusting a picture on the wall.
• The sun is 10,000 degrees on the surface and 27,000 degrees at the core.
• The sky is blue because dust in the atmosphere scatters the smaller blue rays of the sun.
• Cottage cheese is also called Dutch cheese.
• Jet lag is also called Circadian Rhythm Stress.
• The Vietnam War is also called the Indochina Conflict.
• Miniscule is the official name for lower case letters.
• Majuscule is the official name for upper case letters.
• What is the longest word in the English language?  Smiles – there's a mile between the two s's.
• Aposiopesis is the deliberate failure to complete a sentence.
• You know what a synonym or an antonym is, or maybe a pseudonym.  But did you know that when the meaning of a word is changed by capitalization or no capitalization, then it's called a capitonym.

polish becomes Polish
herb becomes Herb, etc.

Peter Bales, a 16th century Brit, wrote with such microscopic print that he wrote a walnut sized Bible.

The French horn is from Germany.

The Great Dane has no connection to Denmark.

Cold-blooded animals often have warmer blood than. . .

Softwood is often harder than hardwood.

Catgut is made from sheep gut.

Caesar wasn't born by Caesarean Section.

A cold is not caused by cold.

Starfish are not fish.  The jellyfish is not a fish.

The electric eel is not an eel.

As much as we love answers,  real growth happens more and better by our attention to questions.

Where do we start if we're doing a checkup on our most critical of critical relationships?  Out of all the questions I could ask, what comes first, and even last?  What one question is so central to the Christian system of wholeness and hopefulness – so central that to answer it badly is to miss both wholeness and real hope?

Do you know how loved you are?  Loved by whom?  "If God is for us, who can be against us?"  "Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen?"  "Who shall separate us from the love of God?  Shall trouble or hardship; or persecution or famine; or nakedness or danger or sword?"  Do we hear this?  Do we believe this? Do we know how critical it is that we ponder this and let it sink in?  Do you know how loved you are?

Do you know the One who loves you?  Do you know the God revealed in the person of Jesus?  "Who," asked Jesus "do men say that I am?" Do you know the Son who is the exact representation of the character of the Father but in human flesh?  Do you know the Father who exposes his core nature by sending His son?  Do you know the Spirit who is their very breath and the powerful agent of their comfort and counsel?  "We receive his blessings and know his word," but, asks Oswald Chambers, " do we know Him?"

Have you been born again by the power of that Holy Spirit?  Have you invited Jesus to be your leader and Lord and submitted the course of your life to His purposes?  Have you called on the Holy Spirit to fill you with new life and power and wisdom?  Are you a new person under the influence of God?

Are you growing closer to God?  Are you growing closer relationally?  Are you growing closer in character, finding kinship with God's hopes and values, or is your faith being stunted by a host of stumbling blocks and entanglements?

Like What?  

1. Is habitual sin thwarting your closeness to God? "What shall we say, then?  Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase?  If we died to sin," Paul asks, "how can we live in it any longer?  Or don't you know that all of us who were baptized, or immersed into Christ Jesus were immersed into His death?"  "What, then?" Paul keeps asking, "Shall we sin because we're not under law, but under grace?"  "What benefit did you reap… at that time from the things you are now ashamed of?"  "Who will rescue me from this body of death?"  Is that your cry?  Is habitual sin your stopper?
2. Or is bitterness the poison that stunts your growth?  Do you cling to wrongs suffered?  Are you nursing grudges and polishing the chips on your shoulder?  "How many times" they asked Jesus "should we forgive?  Seven times?"  Do you remember Jesus' response about seven times seventy?  Are you having a hard time with the higher math?  Are you withholding forgiveness and starving yourself of the life-giving energy of grace?
3. Or is it chronic hardship that has you frozen in place?  "Do you want," Jesus asked the man by the pool "to be healed?"  Or has this wound or condition become a worthy excuse to live half a life?  Are you willing to believe, along with the wise voices like Philip Yancey, that pain can actually be God's megaphone?  Does pain drive one away from God, asks Yancey, or straight into God's arms?  
4. Or is ingratitude keeping you from drawing close to God?  "Where," asked Jesus "are the others?"  Why did only one out of ten return to thank Jesus for healing and help?  Are we too proud to admit we needed help, or just too dull to realize our utter dependence?
5. Or maybe we're on the next thing, worrying about the next potential aliment or calamity?  Is worry stealing away all hope of real settledness and maturity?  "Are you not of more worth," asks Jesus," than the birds and the lilies and the grass?  Doesn't your Father take care of them?  And have you added one hour to your life by worrying?"
6. And why worry so much about what others think?  Isn't that a growth inhibitor?  Like Jesus asked the disciples when the crowd began to thin, "Are you leaving, too?"  Would you rather appease people or please God?  "Am I trying to win the approval of men?" Paul asks, "or secure the approval of God?"
7. Or are we so worried about the other people that we care more about their foibles than our own?  Have we grown more skilled at the use of telescopes to see into our neighbors windows of frailties and failures, and less adept at the use of a simple mirror?  Are we so busy judging the slow growth of others that we don't realize that we're viewing them from a virtual standstill?  Am I busy with the "speck in my brother's eye and ignorant to the plank in my own?"
8. "Lord, don't you care that my sister has left me to do all the work?"  Am I a busybody, with my nose in the business of others, or even such a busy body that I don't know how to sit and enjoy the better part of stillness and prayer and reflection?  Am I hurting myself and stifling my growth by busyness?  "Simon, son of John, do you love me," asks Jesus, "more than these fish?"  "Are you ready to answer to a higher calling than mere vocation and feed my sheep?"

Can't you just leave me alone?  Can't I do my own thing?  Do I have to answer to you, Lord?

"Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord,'" asks Jesus, "and do not do what I say?"

Are you or aren't you seriously committed to God's program for your life?  Are you answering the highest command of all?  Are you loving God essentially by loving your neighbor?  Are you being a neighbor?

Am I loving people who really need it?  "If you love those who love you," asks Jesus, "what are you going that pagans aren't' doing?  If you're doing good only to those who can return the favor, so what?  If you're lending money only to those who can pay it back, what credit is that to your spiritual account?"

Are you living for the lost?  Am I looking for the lost, loving the lost, leading the lost to the shelter of God's love and God's community? "Doesn't the real shepherd," asks Jesus, "leave the 99 in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it?"

"How, "Paul asks, "can they call on the One they have not believed in?  And how can they believe in the One of whom they have not heard?  And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? And how can they preach if they are not sent?"

And how or when will we ever be sent if we're never really given our lives to God?  What is the kingdom of God like?  What asks Jesus can the kingdom be compared to?  "What one of you," he asks," if you found a treasure hidden in a field, would not go and sell all that you have so that you can purchase that field?"

Can we really expect to know the wholeness and enjoy the real hope and security and peace if our commitment is piecemeal, and not whole?

Do you know how loved you are?  Do you know how good and rich and meaningful and peaceful life can be when it's saturated by God's love and applied to God's purposes?

Are there only questions?  Isn't there a single answer?

Of course there is.

"I am convinced that neither death nor life, nor angels nor demons, nor the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord."

I am also convinced that there are plenty of things that keep us from enjoying God's love and from loving Him back.