Inner Man

In 1889, Vincent van Gogh committed himself to a psychiatric asylum in Southern France, where he spent a turbulent year creating roughly 150 paintings, including masterpieces such as “Irises,” “Almond Blossom” and “The Starry Night.”

Now, a former curator of ancient art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art has teamed up with a group of conservators, scientists, and historians who believe they’ve discovered No. 151. It is a previously unknown Van Gogh portrait of a fisherman plucked from a Minnesota garage sale a few years ago by an unsuspecting antiques collector in Minnesota. The dealer called to say he’d spotted this fisherman in a bin of other paintings at a garage sale. He’d bought it because he liked the work’s impasto, or thickly painted brushstrokes.

A team of specialists is trying to prove that the canvas bought for less than $50 was painted by the iconic artist and is now worth $15 million.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Human Worth; Value - Just as we often find unexpected treasures in the most unlikely places, people, too, carry within themselves hidden value that may not be immediately apparent. Each individual holds unique talents, perspectives, and strengths waiting to be discovered and appreciated. By taking the time to look beyond the surface, we open ourselves to the possibility of uncovering remarkable qualities in others.

When Desirae Kelly woke at 5am, she knew something was off. Kelly felt an unsettling fluttering sensation in her right ear, but initially dismissed it, thinking it was the comforter on her bed. She only sought medical attention after being persuaded by her fiancé.

Sitting in the clinic's waiting room, Kelly felt the mysterious movement again, this time accompanied by pain near her eardrum. By this point Kelly thought it was earwax. The nurse, however, made a startling revelation. There was something in her ear, and it was moving.

The nurse treated Kelly's ear by irrigating it with water, which prompted a black object to fall onto her sweater. To her horror, it was a live spider, about the size of a nickel. Fortunately, there was no damage to her eardrum, and no medication was required to prevent infection.

Despite the reassurance that her ear was free of spider remnants or eggs, the incident left a lasting impact on Kelly. Every night since the traumatic event, she has worn earplugs, unable to shake the uneasy and violating feeling of a spider crawling out of her ear.

Possible Preaching Angle:

We need God's help to be truly aware of what's going on inside. If we're not careful about how we live, and if we're not faithful to practice a rhythm of self-examination, we might be surprised by the ugliness we find in our own selves.

Are you a good person? There’s an easy way to tell, according to the Internet at least. It’s based on what you do with a shopping cart when you are done with it. If you put it in the designated shopping cart collection area in the parking lot, you’re good. If you leave it to drift off into parking spots, you’re bad.

The test has been discussed on Reddit and Twitter. On Reddit, a user laid out a very detailed description of the theory that essentially claims:

The shopping cart is what determines whether a person is a good or bad member of society. Objectively, the correct action to take is to put the shopping cart where it’s supposed to go. It’s not illegal to abandon the cart, so you can do that without consequence. … Therefore the shopping cart presents itself as the apex example of whether a person will do what is right without being forced to do it. No one will punish you … or fine you … you gain nothing by returning the shopping cart. You must return the shopping cart because it is the right thing to do.

Another said:

For a date you need to take them to a restaurant and do the waiter test & then later go to the store with them & do the shopping cart test.

Finally,

The only way to truly know a person’s character, is to secretly follow them to the grocery store and watch what they do with the cart when they’re done.

You can view the Reddit thread here.

Possible Preaching Angle:

God also tests our character, but instead of the shopping cart test, God uses other measures to examine us: The test of love (1 Cor. 13), the test of the fruits of the Spirit (Gal. 5:22-23), the test of Christlikeness (Rom. 8:29), the stress test (1 Pet. 1:7), and others.

Actor and director Justine Bateman has never gone under the knife and never will. The 55-year-old Family Ties actress is so perplexed by society’s acceptance of plastic surgery that she has penned a new book, Face: One Square Foot of Skin, in which she explores the idea of getting some work done. She says,

Why is the idea that women’s older faces are undesirable, what is the root of all that? How did we get to this point in our current society where cutting your face up, or injecting it, or inserting plastic or whatever, is spoken about so matter-of-factly?

We went from, “Wow someone getting a face lift is quite unusual!” to, “It’s not a matter of if, it’s a matter of when.” To me it’s really, it’s like, psychopathic. It’s lunacy, and I don’t like that we’re going along with it without pausing to think about it.

The reporter said, “What struck me in reading Bateman’s book was how much time we spend fretting about whether we should do something about our faces or hold out. And I don’t just mean older women. I have friends in their 20s who also fall into a vortex of products that promise to reverse aging that isn’t even visible yet. The Instagram generation hasn’t been spared, in fact, they may have accumulated more time examining their faces than any before them.”

In nearly a decade on the bench, Judge Roy Ferguson has done a lot presiding over the 394th District in Texas. But just as 2020 held plenty of surprises for us all, so did 2021. In February, Judge Ferguson was presiding over a hearing via the teleconferencing platform Zoom, and was waiting for attorney Rod Ponton to connect. Suddenly, an image popped up in Ponton’s video quadrant. But it wasn’t Ponton’s face; rather, it was the moving image of a grey tabby cat.

The incident was immortalized on YouTube, where it’s been viewed over ten million times. Judge Ferguson says, “Mr. Ponton … I believe you have a filter turned on.” Obviously flustered, Ponton tries to persuade the court of his legitimacy and his awareness of the problem. “Ahh … we’re trying to … can you hear me, Judge? … I don’t know how to remove it, I’ve got my assistant here, she’s trying to, but …” And then Ponton utters words that will live on in infamy: “I’m here live … I’m not a cat.”

Eventually the cat filter was removed, and the hearing continued normally. And after receiving worldwide attention for the blunder, Mr. Ponton remained in good spirits: "If I can make the country chuckle for a moment in these difficult times they're going through, I'm happy to let them do it at my expense."

Possible Preaching Angle:

In a society where it's easy to manipulate images, we must be diligent not to just accept superficial evidence but to look deeper for the real truth of the situation.

Author Katy Kelleher reflects on something that is ubiquitous in every home--mirrors. She observes that mirrors are a lot like photographs:

… Like photographs, mirrors have been used to create false realities. We act as though what we see in the mirror is complete — a self fully formed and rendered truly. But the mirror is only capable of showing what others see. Mirrors reinforce the idea that a person’s value lies on the outside of their body, that it’s possible to learn our value by examining (and altering) our appearance.

Mirrors can convey the false idea that our appearance is more important than personality and character. Kelleher knows this yet she is “not exempt from the desire … to be visually appraised by relative strangers and found acceptable, attractive, worthy. I look at my face in a mirror and I don’t see myself — I see how others might see me, how others might know me, want me. Sometimes, I find myself substituting a camera for a mirror. I turn my iPhone toward my face and use its small screen to check my teeth before a meeting. ... I glean information from this image, but I can also get lost in it, or overwhelmed by it.”

Kelleher finds this all claustrophobic:

Everything is visible, but nothing really matters. We know the mirror is a trick and a trap. But we also know it’s a tool to succeed in a system that is broken, a world that assigns value arbitrarily and penalizes those who can’t adequately perform or conform. Perhaps that’s the ugliest thing about mirrors. They reveal more about society than they do about individuals, and what they show isn’t always attractive.

Caelie Wilkes was proud of her little succulent plant. But just when she was ready to take the next step in caring for it, she realized her efforts were all for naught. Wilkes said, “I was so proud of this plant. It was full, beautiful coloring, just an overall perfect plant … I had a watering plan for it, if someone else tried to water my succulent I would get so defensive because I just wanted to keep good care of it. I absolutely loved my succulent.”

When Wilkes decided it was ready to be transplanted into a larger vase, she was shocked to find that the plant was plastic. “I put so much love into this plant! I washed its leaves. Tried my hardest to keep it looking it’s best, and it’s completely plastic! How did I not know this? I pull it from the container it’s sitting on ... Styrofoam with sand glued to the top!”

Apparently, the plant’s inability to soak up water never clued in Wilkes about the nature of her plant, because real succulents don’t require much water. She’s since replaced the plant with several real succulents, purchased at a local home improvement chain store.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Outward signs of success are not always accurate indicators of health. What is inside a person may not match the appearance.

The 2010 movie Inception is a James Bond-like thriller in which a group of people enter another person’s dream (and dreams within dreams) to plant an idea in his mind. But in an early scene from the movie, one character (Arthur) explains to another (Saito) that it actually isn’t difficult to plant ideas in other people’s minds:

Saito: “If you can steal an idea from someone’s mind, why can’t you plant one there instead?”

Arthur: “Okay, here’s me planting an idea in your head. I say to you, ‘Don’t think about elephants.’ What are you thinking about?”

Saito: “Elephants.”

This simple concept helps explain why many rigorous self-improvement strategies struggle to yield lasting results. Diets constantly remind dieters what they’re missing out on. Every time a former smoker puts a nicotine patch on their arm, they’re reminded of what could be in their hands instead. These things can be great aids to cutting out unhealthy things, but alone, they’re frustrating reminders of the thing being cut out.

Robert Morgan relates a story from the life of John Wooden, one of the most revered coaches in the history of college basketball, who credited much of his success to his dad. He recalled a boyhood occasion when he watched his father deal with a certain situation. His rural Indiana county would pay local farmers to take teams of mules or horses into the gravel pits scattered through the county and haul out loads of gravel. Some pits were deeper than others, and sometimes it was hard for a team to pull a wagon filled with gravel out through the wet sand and up the steep incline.

One steamy summer day, wrote Wooden, a young farmer was trying to get his team of horses to pull a fully loaded wagon out of the pit. He was whipping and cursing those beautiful plow horses, which were frothing at the mouth, stomping, and pulling back from him. The elder Wooden watched for a while, then went over to the young man and said, "Let me take 'em for you."

Dad started talking to the horses, almost whispering to them, and stroking their noses with a soft touch. Then he walked between them, holding their bridles and bits while he continued talking-very calmly and gently-as they settled down. Gradually he stepped out in front of them and gave a little whistle to start them moving forward while he guided the reins. Within moments, those two big plow horses pulled the wagon out of the gravel pit as easy as could be. As if they were happy to do it.

John Wooden said, ''I've never forgotten what I saw him do and how he did it. Over the years I've seen a lot of leaders act like that angry young farmer who lost control. ... So much more can usually be accomplished by Dad's calm, confident, and steady approach."

Wooden took away an indelible lesson: "It takes strength inside to be gentle on the outside."

According to CNN, ranchers of the prized breed of cattle known as Wagyu go to great lengths to enhance the already legendary flavor of their beef. They use typical fattening agents in their feed to achieve a certain amount of marbling, which enhances its appearance and keeps it moist. But an Australian ranch called Mayura Station produces Wagyu beef with a distinctive, sweet taste to it. The secret is in a special blend of cattle feed, which includes copious amounts of sweetening agents—or as most of us would call it—candy.

The envy of ten-year-olds worldwide, cattle at Mayura Station bred as Wagyu subsist on a diet of chocolate, cookies and candy, often sold as irregular or expired stock from brand-name factories like Cadbury. Their regular feed is more of a pedestrian blend (or is it equestrian? Bovestrian?) of wheat, hay, rye grass, and maize. But the candy mix is a special addition that the cattle eat for the last few months of their lives before they're slaughtered and processed.

This unorthodox approach appears to be working; the most choices cuts of Wagyu beef from Mayura Station can retail for as much as $300 per pound.

Potential Preaching Angles: The importance of ingesting truth, beauty and goodness. What goes in, will come out. The fragrance of Christ is most pungent in times of intense suffering and pain.

We all like rooting for the underdog—but at the World's Ugliest Dog Contest, that word takes on a whole new meaning.

For years, the competition has taken place to "celebrate the imperfections of man's best friend." Many of the dogs were rescued from harsh living conditions and have issues like acne or tongues that refuse to stay in their mouths. For their devoted owners, however, such superficialities hardly matter—with one owner referring to her eight-year-old Chinese Crest, Zoomer, as her "sexy boy."

The contest event lineup includes "a red carpet walk and 'Faux Paw Fashion Show'"; the dogs are sized up based on "first impressions, unusual attributes, personality, and audience reaction." The winner receives prize money and a trophy—but another award, the Spirit Award, "is presented to a dog and owner who have overcome obstacles or provide service to their community."

Potential Preaching Angles: The headline for the article describing the contest reads "World's Ugliest Dog Contest awards underdogs' inner beauty." It's a sentiment that might be reminiscent of a certain command to Samuel: "Do not consider [Eliab's] appearance or his height, for I have rejected him. The Lord does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart" (1 Samuel 16:7).

What is more important: who we are or what we do? Here's how pastor Noel Jesse Heikinnen answers that question in his book Unchained:

Down through history, the predominant viewpoint has been that what we do determines who we are. We've all heard the old adage, "You are what you eat." This isn't a new school of thought. Aristotle wrote, "We are what we repeatedly do." A recent TED talk declared, "You are what you tweet." Each one of these proclamations, while carrying a significant nugget of truth, gets the core message of the gospel backward. Frank Zappa, of all people, got it right: "You are what you is." In other words, it's not what we do that determines who we are; rather, who we are determines what we do. This is the biblical paradigm.

In the dynamic relationship between love and knowledge, head and heart, the Scriptures paint a holistic picture of the human person. It's not only our minds that God redeems, but the whole person: head, heart, hands. Christ takes captive our minds but also our kardia, even what Paul calls our splagchna, our "inner parts" that are the seat of our "affections."

Contemporary science is starting to catch up to this ancient biblical wisdom about the human person. Scholars at UCLA and McMaster University have been conducting experiments that are shedding light on our "gut feelings." Their studies point to the way microbes in our stomachs affect the neural activity of the brain. "Your brain is not just another organ," they report. "It's … affected by what goes on in the rest of your body." In fact, Scientific American reports that there is "an often-overlooked network of neurons lining our guts that is so extensive some scientists have nicknamed it our 'second brain.'"

No wonder Jesus invites us to follow him by eating and drinking (John 6:53-58). Discipleship doesn't touch just our head or even just our heart; it reaches into our gut, our splagchna, our affections.

Editor's Note: For more info see also: http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2013/11/18/244526773/gut-bacteria-might-guide-the-workings-of-our-minds. Or http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/gut-second-brain/."

The following illustration shows how important names are to our identity, character, self-worth, and calling. It also shows why biblical names for God and Jesus reveal so much about God's character.

Based on a true story, according to court records filed in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, 44-year-old Mr. Gary Matthews petitioned the court to have his name legally changed to "Boomer the Dog." In his petition, Mr. Matthews stated, "I've been known as Boomer the Dog by friends in the community for more than 20 years. I want to bring my legal name in line with that."

Judge Ronald Folilno denied Mr. Matthew's name-change request, arguing that it would cause too much confusion. Judge Folino's decision included the following example:

Petitioner witnesses a serious automobile accident and [calls 911]. The dispatcher queries as to the caller's identity, and the caller responds, "This is Boomer the Dog." It is not a stretch to imagine the telephone dispatcher concluding that the call is a prank and refusing therefore to send an emergency medical response. I am denying the petitioner's request.

The judge concluded his memorandum by observing, "Although the petitioner apparently wishes it were otherwise, the simple fact remains that he is not a dog."

During the 2007-2008 NFL regular season, New England Patriots' quarterback Tom Brady set the record for most touchdown passes in a regular season, paving the way for his winning the MVP award. At the age of 30, he has already won three Super Bowls—an accomplishment that sets him apart as one of the best quarterbacks to ever play the game.

In 2005, Tom Brady was interviewed by 60 Minutes journalist Steve Kroft. Despite the fame and career accomplishments he had achieved already, Brady told Kroft that it felt like something was still lacking in his life:

Why do I have three Super Bowl rings and still think there's something greater out there for me? I mean, maybe a lot of people would say, 'Hey man, this is what [it's all about].' I reached my goal, my dream, my life. Me? I think, 'It's got to be more than this.' I mean this isn't—this can't be—all it's cracked up to be."

Kroft pressed Brady as to what the right answer was, and Brady added:

What's the answer? I wish I knew… I love playing football, and I love being quarterback for this team. But at the same time, I think there are a lot of other parts about me that I'm trying to find.

When Dick Peterson's wife, Elizabeth, was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, he knew many challenges awaited his family. What he didn't know was just how many lessons he would learn along the way about love and service in the name of Christ. He writes:

The intruder invaded Elizabeth's body, and by extension, mine. Her disease became my disease and made demands on our relationship we were ill-prepared to manage. As she moved from cane to walker to electric scooter and finally to a powered wheelchair, then lost use of her right hand, I had to adjust my life to fit her needs.

Uninvited and unwelcome, this disease now forces us into a kind of sick reality game, leaving no choice but to follow the rules even as they change and become more restrictive …

Every family divvies up chores, fairly or not so fairly. The MS dictates ours and it's not at all fair, but we do have the choice to let it tear us apart or use it to strengthen our marriage bond as we face the adversity together. This reaches deeper than deciding who does what. It reaches to feelings, emotions, and attitudes about what we do, what's done to us, and who we are to ourselves and each other …

We both pray for healing. With our families and our church, we agonize before God for a return to the day when Elizabeth can offer an open handshake instead of a permanently clenched fist, or take a flight of stairs without thought.

But if we only grieve the loss, we miss the gain—that what this disease does to us may also be done for us. Even as the MS steals abilities from Elizabeth's life, a healing grows almost undetected inside. When we talk about this, Elizabeth wonders aloud, "Did it really take this to teach me that my soul is more important to God than my body?"

And I ask, "Is this what Jesus meant when he taught his disciples to serve? When he washed their feet, did he look 2,000 years into the future and see me washing my wife's clothes and helping her onto her shower seat to bathe? Did it really take this to teach me compassion?" …

God's healing can be sneaky. We pray that Elizabeth will resume her old life; he wants her to assume a new life. We long for change on the outside; he desires change on the inside. We pray for what we want; he answers with what he knows we need …

[God] has made me question whom it is I love. When I pray for healing, is it for Elizabeth? Or is it because her healing would make life so much easier for me? I challenge, "Aren't you the God who heals? I love her and I want her well." But in the back of my mind I know I also want her healed for me.

In response to my challenge, Jesus asks me as he asked Peter, "Do you love me more than these?" I think, He wants me to love him more than my wife. So I reply with Peter's words, "Yes, Lord. You know that I love you."

"Tend my lambs," he tells me …

The exposure shames me. Do I love him more than these? This is the love of Matthew 22:37–39 that commands me to love God with all that's within me, with all my heart, soul, and mind, and to love my neighbor—my wife—as I would myself.

Loving what I want for myself isn't even on the list. It's not in me to love like that, except that God has promised that his love "has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us" (Romans 5:5, NASB). God has given me an impossible command, but he has given me the power to obey it.

The intruder still resides in our home, still presents us with new challenges each day, and still teaches us forceful lessons on submission, dependence, service, and a love that endures all things and never fails—even when I fail.

Strange as it may seem, that intruder is beginning to look more and more like a guest.