J. Davy Crockett III

Have you ever felt like you were being pulled in several directions at once, and you just weren’t able to achieve your goals? We can have excellent goals—and yet not know which ones to pursue with the limited time and resources we have!

Some people just have a way with words, and the knack of getting to the heart of a matter. Proverbs, the Book of Wisdom, expresses it this way, “A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in settings of silver” (Proverbs 25:11).

As once I followed up with an old friend who had been wrestling, with some success, a serious health problem, a sudden update on his condition was devastating. What had seemed to be a good course of treatment proved to be less effective than expected. The condition had worsened, and the prognosis was not good.

The dominant crisis now on the world scene is the massive influx of refugees crushing in on the borders of Eastern European nations. Tens of thousands of oppressed peoples from the Middle East and Northern Africa are clamoring to get into these countries. Most want to get to the European Union, which has accepted over half a million migrants and is now balking at accepting more. This intense pressure, financially and culturally, may reveal cracks in the fabric of the E.U. as member nations try to absorb the massive influx of poor, desperate people.