Risk

When I played football as a kid, my main position was offensive line…because I had the spiritual gift of taking up space. But, every once in a while, Coach let…

Stop signs serve a really important purpose: they warn drivers they’re approaching danger. But what happens if a stop sign isn’t where it’s supposed to be? What happens if there’s no warning?

Sadly, our entire nation learned that grim lesson back in 1996.

Wade was a young man who worked diligently at his job delivering newspapers. His daily route took him to some of the elite neighborhoods in his community, and he soon befriended Mr. Chiles, a wealthy man who owned a massive estate at the end of Lakeview Drive.

In December of 1988, a song entitled Every Rose Has Its Thorn finally topped the Billboard Charts. Focusing on the heartache of unfaithfulness, the song gave Poison their first (and only) #1 hit.

But the band’s joy was tempered by the fact that the song was based on the real life pain of their lead singer.

Philip Seymour Hoffman. Cory Monteith. River Phoenix. They all share at least two things in common: they were highly-paid actors…and they died from an overdose of heroin. Now, lawmakers are working to ensure that no one else suffers the same fate.

But their “solution” is a highly contested one….

Dachau Concentration Camp, 1945. A place of unrelenting suffering and death. More than 25,000 “enemies of the state” lost their lives in this hellish place during the Holocaust. Every prisoner trapped behind the wire jumped at the chance of escape.

Every prisoner except Viktor Frankl.

Where did you meet your spouse? (Fellas, I apologize if I put you on the spot.) Did you meet her at college? Did you find him at church? Elevator? Job interview? Married couples have met in some unique places over the years.

But no one has ever met their spouse in a stranger place than William Tippins.

There’s no such thing as a perfect family, mainly because families tend to be made up of humans. Every family has at least a little bit of dysfunction to it. But a little bit of dysfunction can be tolerated, and sometimes even overcome.

But all bets are off when people start shooting at one another!

Believer or not, just about everyone is familiar with the account of Daniel’s night spent with the lions. In the well-known story, a pagan king threw one of God’s prophets into a den filled with the terrifying animals. Of course, Daniel walked out the next morning completely unscathed.

The same cannot be said about a man in Taipei who willing confronted a group of lions.

Hoping is risky business…just ask anyone who’s ever done it. That’s because, in life, we speak of hope getting “dashed,” “crushed,” and even “lost.” In those painful moments, we must decide if we’ll ever hope again, and if so, in what or who.

That was the exact decision one particular AIDS patient faced years ago….