Initiative

The next time you find yourself rotting in bed or going through the motions of another boring day, think about your older self. This is what TikTok creator @sonyatrachsel does when she’s in a funk. She’ll have what she calls a “time traveling day,” and it’s an outlook that’s resonating on the app.

On a time traveling day, Sonya will pretend that her 80-year-old self gets to come back to this exact moment and relive it. “You have to get real with it,” she said. “Close your eyes, imagine yourself sitting in your mansion on a chair, and then poof — you’re here today.”

There are so many reasons why Sonya’s “time traveling” trend has struck a chord. For one, it might make you emotional to think about your older self getting the chance to come back to a younger body for a day, kind of like a second chance.

This is a really beautiful way to frame your thoughts, practice gratitude, and think about what you would do if you had youth on your side again. Would you ride a bike? Go for a walk? Learn something new? Would you linger longer in the park and stare at the flowers? Be more adventurous?

Even mundane moments, like waiting in line, can become more meaningful when you think about how excited your 80-year-old self would be to come back to do it all over again. “It just becomes part of the experience,” she said.

This sweet and thoughtful approach to living can help you notice and appreciate the little things around you, but it can also inspire you to do more, live more, and have more fun. So, get up, get out there, and give your 80-year-old self a story to tell.

In her comments, someone wrote, “You just changed my life.” Another said, “This is genius! Don’t take your youth for granted.” “Thank you,” one commenter wrote under the video. “When I read this, I got up out of bed so fast.”

When Krish Kandiah was young, growing up in the United Kingdom, his family could always count on their next-door neighbor, Mrs. Oglive, to be around. They left a spare key with her in case they got locked out, because she was always there—morning, afternoon, and night—to let them in.

Mrs. Oglive never went out. She suffered from agoraphobia, the fear of open spaces. Having lived next door to her for 40 years now, they still haven’t seen her venture past her doorway. She wasn’t always this way. She has pictures on her mantelpiece of less anxious days, from her honeymoon with Mr. Oglive and from a day at the beach with her children. But after her husband died, Mrs. Oglive began to isolate herself.

One can only imagine the heavy cloud of fear and frustration that surrounds her. Now frail and in the twilight of life, Mrs. Oglive’s curtains are almost always drawn.

There are some parallels between Mrs. Oglive and the contemporary church. Many Christians observe the world from behind closed curtains, bemoaning culture instead of engaging it. Many local churches are isolated from the wider community and world, bunkered up like doomsayers, suffering from fear of an open public square with divergent viewpoints and lifestyles.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Only by encountering the risen Christ and receiving the life-giving power of the Holy Spirit are we able to step beyond our doors and carry out God’s mission. When we do so, we are transformed from an agoraphobic church to an apostolic church.

One hundred years ago (1922), a Minnesota man named Ralph Samuelson went to a local lumberyard. Most people would have said that Samuelson found two ordinary eight-foot-long pine boards. But Samuelson had a more creative idea. He saw two water skis. Here’s the backstory on his invention of waterskiing.

Samuelson lived in Minnesota and wondered if you could ski on water the way you could on snow. At 18, he made his own skis and had his brother pull him behind his boat. He unsuccessfully tried snow skis and barrel staves before realizing that he needed something that covered more surface area on the water. That’s when Samuelson spotted two eight-foot-long, nine-inch-wide pine boards.

Using his mother’s wash boiler, he softened one end of each board, then clamped the tips with vises so they would curve upwards. He affixed leather straps to hold his feet in place and acquired 100 feet of window sash cord to use as a tow rope. Finally, he hired a blacksmith to make a small iron ring to serve as the rope’s handle.

Samuelson tried several different approaches. In most of his attempts, he started with his skis level with or below the water line; but by the time his brother got the boat going, Samuelson was sinking.

Finally, he tried raising the tips of the skis out of the water while he leaned back—and it worked. As his brother steered the boat, Samuelson cruised along behind him. To this day, this is still the position that water skiers assume. Samuelson began performing tricks on his skis and crowds as large as 1,000 came out to watch him.

Possible Preaching Angles:

1) Creativity; Persistence; Vision – Those who are truly successful often start with a dream and persist despite setbacks. Just because it has never been tried before, doesn’t mean it can’t work. 2) Skill; Spiritual Gifts; Talent – God gives different gifts to his people to use for the common good. Don’t neglect your gift, but use it to glorify God and to serve his people.

When the crowd inside the gymnasium stood to its feet to begin the game between the West Portsmouth High Senators and the visiting Tigers of Waverly High, everything seemed to be ready. Except, there was one missing ingredient. The announcer had just directed everyone to stand for the national anthem, but after a few awkward seconds turned into a minute, then two minutes, it became clear that something was wrong with the sound system.

That’s when Waverly parent Trenton Brown decided he’d waited long enough. Brown told CNN, "I looked over at the announcer and the music didn't play and didn't play and I looked over and he was getting a little frustrated. My wife gave me a little nudge and said ‘Sing’ and I said, ‘All right.'" Brown began to sing, and after a bit, others in the crowd also joined in.

Johnny Futhey was in the crowd, and managed to catch the moment on video with his phone. Futhey, whose son is teammates with Brown’s, felt the moment was special, so he posted it to social media. Futhey said, "He brought about everyone in the gym to tears when he saved the day by standing up in the crowd and singing the anthem.”

Despite the video getting over a million views, Brown has taken the whole experience in stride. "There was a lot of awkward silence ... and then I started singing and that was it."

Possible Preaching Angle:

As a Christian you never know when you might be called upon to provide a needed service in a critical moment; it’s important to remain flexible and ready to move when the Spirit provides opportunity.

Solving a common entrepreneurial challenge, eleven-year-old Seth Parker found an easy way to generate interest in his fledgling enterprise, and all he had to do was include a little fine print.

Passersby saw Parker standing next to a soda stand with a sign that read “ICE COLD BEER” in large letters. Eventually one of them called police, who came to check on the boy. Upon further inspection, they saw he had inserted, in small print, the word “root.” Parker was not selling alcohol, but IBC-brand root beer.

The responding officers were so impressed with Parker’s chutzpah and salesmanship, they posed for a picture with the boy, and posted it to the department Facebook page, which received over ten thousand likes and shares.

Potential Preaching Angle: Though we shouldn't build our ministries on a foundation of deception, misdirection and humor can help create opportunities that might not otherwise exist. Jesus commended his believers in being innovative in recognizing the urgency of kingdom business.

According to his mother Trinell, once Monte Scott sees a need, he usually tries to fix it himself. Which is why he decided to shovel dirt from his backyard into a pothole on a city street in front of his house. “I didn't want people messing up their cars like my mom did,” Scott said. “If somebody were to drive down the street and hit a pothole, and then would have to pay like $600-700 to get their car fixed, they would be mad."

Such selfless initiative is in short supply in the world, which explains why video of his exploits went viral on Facebook, being viewed over 52,000 times in just a few days. “I was at work, and I got a text message from my niece, and she'd seen the video on Facebook,” Trinell Scott said.

Unwilling to stop at one, Monte has since filled in 15 different potholes in the area around his home. “Now people see that we in Muskegon Heights, do produce good kids,” said Trinell Scott. “Everything is not bad out of Muskegon Heights.”

Potential Preaching Angles: You can’t serve everyone or everything that is in need, but sometimes paying attention to the Holy Spirit's nudge means using your ability to meet an unmet need without being invited.

There are a handful of "hinge" moments in world history. June 6, 1944, or D-Day, was one of those moments. On that day hung the balance of power in World War II—and the fate of the world. One of the mostly unknown heroes of D-Day was a man who never set foot on a Normandy beach, never commanded a single troop and never wore a uniform—Andrew Jackson Higgins.

Higgins was the man responsible for designing and building the LCVP, the small landing boats that brought the troops onto the beaches on D-Day. If Higgins hadn't had the foresight to see the need for them, then design and build them, former President Dwight Eisenhower said, "the whole strategy of the war would have been different."

And what's even more amazing is that Higgins did it all without any request from the military—in fact he did so by pushing against the wishes of the US Navy. At the time, the Navy was only interested in larger vessels like destroyers and battleships. They had no interest in smaller vessels, especially not the LCVPs that Higgins had in mind.

If you've ever seen a D-Day movie, you know what an LCVP is. They're the small landing vessels with flat bottoms and high sides that ushered the troops up to the beach, then dropped their flat bows into the water to let the troops exit straight ahead, into horrifying barrages of gunfire. The Navy didn't want LCVPs, which later became known to soldiers and the world as "Higgins Boats," because their small size and flat bottoms meant they couldn't navigate across the English Channel.

But Higgins saw what the Navy couldn't see. That, after crossing the channel, the larger ships would not be able to get troops close enough to the shore. The assault on the beaches of Normandy involved dozens of battleships, scores of destroyers, and thousands of Higgins Boats. The larger vessels transported personnel and equipment across the English Channel under the cover of darkness. Then, as tens of thousands of troops boarded thousands of Higgins Boats, the destroyers and battleships barraged the coastline from a distance to prepare it for the landing troops.

No wonder, then, that twenty years after D-Day, President Dwight Eisenhower casually told the writer Stephen Ambrose, "[Higgins] is the man who won the war for us."

Editor's Note: This story is also retold in Stephen Ambrose's book D-Day: The Climactic Battle of World War II.

For the 1889 World's Fair in Paris, more than a hundred artists submitted plans to design the centerpiece, the masterpiece of the Exposition Universelle. The winner was an engineer named Alexandre Gustave Eiffel, who proposed a 984-foot tower, the tallest building in the world at that time. Skeptics scoffed at his design, calling it useless and artless. Eiffel called her La Dame De Fer—the Iron Lady. Gustave Eiffel's name was on his tower, but Eiffel himself thanked seventy-two scientists, engineers, and mathematicians on whose shoulders he stood. Their names are inscribed on the tower.

The Tower also relied on 300 riveters, hammermen, and carpenters who put together the 18,038-piece jigsaw puzzle of wrought iron in two years, two months, and five days. Oh, and don't forget the acrobatic team Eiffel hired to help his workers maintain balance on very thin beams during strong gusts of wind. We have each of them to thank—as well as the Paris city council that voted in 1909 not to tear down the tower despite the fact that its twenty-year permit had expired. The tower's longevity also depends on each councilmember and to each of the voters who put them in office.

Several years ago, an enormous financial crisis loomed in Europe. The very survival of the structure of the euro currency, if not the whole of Europe, was at stake. All eyes were on one man: the head of the European Central Bank. Financial markets and currencies plunged all through the morning, and the only question on anyone's lips was, "What will he say?" His words would either cause an implosion or the reversion of the volatility.

On the morning of July 26, 2012, he stood up, and when asked what he would do to protect the euro, he answered in three simple words. "Whatever it takes." At that moment, in human terms, he spoke for the might of the major industrial countries of Europe. As soon as he spoke those words, the markets rallied. The immediate crisis was over. The structure of the currency was secured.

There's a challenge here for us. When confronted with a world in need of the gospel of Jesus Christ, with a world crying out in pain, with a world riven by inequality, poverty, and need, how will we respond? Will we hunker down and ignore the outside world? Or will we be willing to say, "Whatever it takes"? Whatever it takes to see our communities restored, our workplaces transformed, our world healed? Whatever it takes to see justice and righteousness roll on like a river? Whatever it takes to see our friends, colleagues, and neighbors come to realize that they, too, are known, loved, and called by their Father in heaven?

The musician, poet, songwriter Leonard Cohen used the following image for the creative process of writing (for teachers, artists, preachers, etc.):

[The creative process is] like a bear stumbling into a beehive or a honey cache: I'm stumbling right into it and getting stuck, and it's delicious and it's horrible and I'm in it and it's not very graceful and it's very awkward and it's very painful and yet there's something inevitable about it.

Possible Preaching Angles: 1)Teachers; Pastors; All who teach and preach Scripture know the labor of studying the Word and the delight of discovering its sweetness to present it to others; 2) Arts; Creativity; Vision; The creative process can be a fire in the bones that combines agony with a drive to complete the vision.

At the turn of the century, Blockbuster reigned supreme in the video rental industry. If your family craved a movie night, someone likely had to drive to one of Blockbuster's 9,000 stores, stroll through rows of DVD-lined shelves, and hand a membership card to a blue-clad employee. When Reed Hastings, founder of a fledgling startup called Netflix, met with Blockbuster CEO John Antioco in 2000 to propose a partnership, he was laughed out of the office.

Despite changing consumer preferences, Blockbuster doubled down on its store-first model by offering popcorn, books, and toys, while Netflix experimented with a subscription model and no late fees. Only 10 years later, Netflix became the largest source of streaming Internet traffic in North America during peak hours, with over 20 million subscribers. Blockbuster declared bankruptcy.

Possible Preaching Angles: We in ministry have a similar choice before us. Our calling and message should never change. But, like a doctor refusing to attend medical conferences, if we don't regularly step back to look at innovations in our vocation, we will miss opportunities to influence people.

The newest addition to the grand list of Coolest Things Ever was first unveiled in New York City in 2013: the Lego X-Wing, the largest Lego model ever built. The model of the classic Star Wars fighter has a wingspan of 44 feet and comes complete with R2-D2 and a full range of sound effects. It's a super-duper-sized version of Star Wars Lego starfighter set #9493 and was made with 5,335,200 Lego bricks. That, according to Lego, makes it the largest model ever built, eclipsing the Lego robot at the Mall of America by some 2 million bricks.

The X-Wing was built at the Lego Model Shop at the company's facility in Kladno, Czech Republic. It took 32 "master builders" and 17,336 man-hours to construct the X-Wing. Plans for the model were created using Lego's proprietary 3-D design software, and the construction team had to work with a team of structural engineers to ensure that the model was safe, master builder Erik Varszegi told Wired magazine. Once completed, the model—which weighs 45,980 pounds—was eventually shipped to Legoland California.

Editor’s Note: This Lego model still holds the record in 2024

Possible Preaching Angles: True leadership and community requires lots of vision (the design stage) and then teamwork and unity (the construction stage).

MIT used to have a famous office building simply called Building 20. This structure, located at the intersection of Main and Vassar Streets in East Cambridge, and eventually demolished in 1998, was thrown together as a temporary shelter during World War II, meant to house the overflow from the school's bustling Radiation Laboratory. As noted by a 2012 New Yorker article, the building was initially seen as a failure: "Ventilation was poor and hallways were dim. The walls were thin, the roof leaked, and the building was broiling in the summer and freezing in the winter."

When the war ended, however, the influx of scientists to Cambridge continued. MIT needed space, so instead of immediately demolishing Building 20, they continued using it as overflow space. The result was that a mismatch of different departments—from nuclear science to linguistics to electronics—shared the low-slung building alongside more ordinary tenants such as a machine shop and a piano repair facility. Because the building was cheaply constructed, these groups felt free to rearrange space as needed. Walls and floors could be shifted and equipment bolted to the beams. For instance, a scientist working on the first atomic clock removed two floors from his Building 20 lab so he could install the three-story cylinder needed for his experiments. In MIT lore, it's generally believed that this haphazard combination of different disciplines, thrown together in a large reconfigurable building, led to chance encounters and a spirit of inventiveness that generated breakthroughs at a fast pace. When the building was finally demolished to make way for a new $300 million office space many at MIT mourned the loss of Building 20. As a matter of fact, the new building includes boards of unfinished plywood and exposed concrete with construction markings left intact.

Possible Preaching Angles: Body of Christ; Church; Community; Fellowship—In some ways the church is like Building 20—people from different backgrounds and walks of life are thrown together in the "household of God," an imperfect place where we can all grow, serve, and create for the glory of God.

Any given day, 23,000 scheduled flights take off and land at American airports. At any given time, 5,000 of those airplanes are simultaneously airborne. That means that approximately one million people are flying 300 mph at 30,000 feet at any given moment.

A hundred years ago, this was the stuff of science fiction. Then two brothers, Wilbur and Orville, turned science fiction into science fact. The Wright brothers' dream of flying traces back to an autumn day in 1878 when their father, a pastor and church leader, brought home a rather unique toy. Using a rubber band to twirl its rotor, a miniature bamboo helicopter flew into the air. Much like our mechanized toy helicopters, it broke after a few flights. But instead of giving up on it and going on to the next toy, the Wright brothers made their own.

And the dream of flying was conceived. A quarter century later, on December 17, 1903, Orville himself went airborne for twelve gravity-defying seconds in the first powered, piloted flight in history. It's almost impossible to imagine life as we know it without airplanes. But like every innovation, every revolution, every breakthrough, someone had to imagine the impossible first. Every dream has a genesis moment. It usually starts small—as small as a toy helicopter. But the chain reaction of faith defies gravity, defies the imagination. Without knowing it, the Wright brothers were creating the airline industry, the FAA, and the TSA. I'm sure it never crossed their minds, but their flying faith is the reason why a million people are speeding through the troposphere right now. It was two pastor's kids, Wilbur and Orville, who punched your ticket with their possibility thinking.

Like most women of her generation who visited New York in 1902, thirty-six-year-old Mary Anderson got to where she was going in a streetcar. On one particular wintery day, she couldn't help but notice how all hell broke loose on the city roads as soon as the weather turned nasty. When it began to rain or snow, every driver was in a mad panic to clear his window in order to see where he was going.

Today we take windscreen wipers for granted, and perhaps you imagined that they were invented along with the car. Not so. When bad weather struck, the driver had to roll down the window and stick his head out the side of the car in an attempt to see the road and oncoming traffic. He sometimes used his hand to clear the windscreen, but that wasn't very effective. The lucky ones might have had a split windshield, half of which could be opened to let the driver see out, but that wasn't very useful or practical and it didn't improve visibility and safety all that much. This situation inspired Mary to think about creating a solution to the problem, which would only get worse as more cars came on the roads. When she returned home to Alabama, Mary worked with a designer to create the first manually operated windscreen wiper, which she obtained the patent for in 1903 (it expired in 1920). It would take almost two more decades for wipers to become standard on new automobiles.

What Mary hit on a century ago was the solution to what Tony Fadell—the creator of the iPod—calls an 'invisible problem'. That's a problem that we don't think of as being a problem because we're so used to it, we just don't see it anymore and don't think about ways that things could be different or better.

A 1954 Life magazine article titled "Why Johnny Can't Read" argued that the "Dick and Jane" books that most schools depended on were just too boring. The books had no real story—just illustrations of children and simple words repeated over and over. All of these books looked and sounded alike. Someone needed to break the mold.

A man named William Spaulding, the director of Houghton Muffin's education division, read that Life magazine article and then approached his friend Ted. Spaulding issued Ted a challenge: "write me a story that first graders can't put down."

Ted was a talented artist with a few children's books in publication, but at the time, he was better known for a few advertising cartoons he'd done for Ford, NBC, and Standard Oil. But he saw an opportunity to use his gifts and talents to rethink children's books and help them learn to read. Ted claimed that if he could find words that rhymed he could write a story that would captivate children. Finally, he found the two words that would form the core of his book—cat and hat.

When Ted Geisel (also known as Dr. Seuss) published The Cat in the Hat in 1957, children's literature was changed dramatically for the better. It had wacky illustrations, interesting characters, and a real story with tension and resolution. Children and parents loved it. The book started a revolution in early readers, helped promote phonics as a reading movement to replace rote memorization, and began the slow decline of those dull early readers. Good-bye, Dick and Jane. Hello, Cat.

In his work with International Justice (a Christian ministry that works to free the victims of human trafficking), Gary Haugen says he has noticed what he calls "the 15-70-15 Rule." Haugen applies this rule to criminal justice systems around the world—police forces, court systems, etc. But the same rule applies to many other areas of the Christian life—leadership, service, evangelism. Haugen writes:

The rule has no real scientific precision, but it expresses the observation that, within criminal justice systems in the developing world, it seems that about 15 percent of the personnel wake up every day intent on using their coercive power and authority for [selfish or corrupt] purposes. Another 15 percent wake up every day with an earnest intent to do good and to serve the public. The vast majority—the remaining 70 percent—are simply waiting to see which of these two factions is going to prevail … As long as the brutal and corrupt 15 percent is prevailing, the rest of the 70 percent are going to go along and join in the dysfunction and abuse—because it … would be risky to oppose the dominant ethos.

Possible Preaching Angles: (1) Justice; Injustice; Servanthood—This rule not only applies to issues of injustice, poverty, and social justice, it can also apply to Christian service or church membership. In other words, are we part of the 70 percent who just wait to see which way the wind is blowing? Or will we take the initiative to pursue what is right and good? (2) Leaders; Leadership—Leaders don't wait to analyze the percentages. They take action for the good no matter what others are doing.

Shawna Pilat had had enough. It was Sunday morning in January of 2000, and her husband, Rick, still wasn't home from his Saturday night partying. "I was at home with my son, Drake, who was 3 at the time," Shawna remembers. "It was very common for Rick to be out all night…. I always knew there was unfaithfulness. That bothered me, naturally, but I was worried about Rick's safety—that he was going to turn up some place dead. And that morning I was at the end of my rope."

As Shawna angrily washed dishes in the kitchen, she noticed a man speaking on the television. She was quickly drawn to his message—he was funny and warm, and seemed to be speaking at her level. "I felt something come over me that I can't explain," she remembers. "I couldn't quit crying. At the end of the program it said, 'Join us,' and it gave the name of a church in Winnipeg. I couldn't get my son dressed fast enough."

On the way to the church, Shawna had one purpose in mind: getting emotionally strong enough to kick Rick out. She had tried using marijuana, alcohol, and various relationships to put Rick out of her heart. Now she thought she'd found the answer. But God had a surprise for her.

At the end of the message, the pastor invited people to give their lives to Christ. Shawna raised her hand. "I never looked back," Shawna says. "Three weeks later, Rick asked if he could join me at church."

Rick knew that his behavior was hurting his family, but he was held captive to drugs and sexual addictions. After four or five weeks of attending church with his wife, he recognized his need for Christ. Still, the following months weren't easy. "I was going to church and wanting to do right," he says, "but I kept doing wrong." It wasn't until a Promise Keepers seminar that he finally came to understand the importance of repentance and accepting the forgiveness God offers through Jesus Christ. That day, Rick went home and told his wife, "I can be the husband you need me to be now."

Rick and Shawna's lives took a 180-degree turn that day. They became active in their church and now serve as Promise Keepers volunteers who share the hope of God's restoration and forgiveness with struggling couples. "When I think how Jesus can change people—no matter how deep in sin they are—that overwhelms me," Rick says. "If he did it for us, he can do it for anybody."

This article was taken from Decision magazine, December 2006; ©2006 Billy Graham Evangelistic Association; used by permission, all rights reserved.

"You can't build a reputation on what you are going to do."

—Henry Ford (1863–1947)

Dr. Evan O'Neill Kane was the chief surgeon of Kane Summit Hospital in New York City and had practiced his specialty for 37 years. He was convinced that general anesthesia was too risky, that people should be operated on with simply a well-administered local anesthesia so the risks of general anesthesia could be bypassed.

He was anxious to prove his theory. The problem was finding a guinea pig willing to go under the knife while conscious. All those he talked to, it seemed, were fearful of their bodies waking up during the surgery and feeling the pain of the deep, probing scalpel.

Finally he found a subject. Kane had performed appendectomies thousands of times. So it was, once again, the same procedure. The patient was prepped and brought to the operating room. The local anesthesia was carefully administered and the surgery began. As always, Kane cut across the right side of the abdomen and went in. He tied off the blood vessels, found the appendix, excised it, and sutured the incision.

Remarkably, the patient felt little discomfort. In fact, he was up and about the next afternoon, which is remarkable since this was 1921, when people who had appendectomies were typically kept in the hospital six, seven, or eight days.

It was a milestone in the world of medicine. It was also a display of courage, because the patient and the doctor were one and the same. Dr. Kane had operated on himself!