Last week, I spent an afternoon with a gentleman in our local congregation who had just returned home after three days in the hospital.  He's home now, and doing better. At 106 years of age, he has maintained a tenacious hold on life. 

Once, while watching my 13-year-old grandson play a Little League baseball game in an All Star game on a summer’s afternoon, I watched the nation’s favorite pastime unfold in a good example of playing hard by the rules and accepting the outcome graciously. I observed the parents, coaches and umpires enjoying the game, and the lessons of life that the players were learning.

From absurd lawsuits to irrational verdicts, the abuse of the legal system in America continues a downward spiral; lawsuits for burns from spilled coffee – unknowingly hot – to even more ridiculous claims like the man who recently filed suit against the Guinness Book of World Records for naming him the World's Most Litigious Man. What can you do to avoid litigation and seek protection from frivolous lawsuits?

On May 26, 2006—high on the north slope of Mount Everest—climbing guide Daniel Mazur, of Olympia, Washington, was faced with a life-or-death decision. He was climbing toward the summit of Everest when he and his party encountered a most unusual sight. "Mazur, his two clients and a Sherpa guide were just two hours from the 29,035-foot peak… when they came across 50-year-old Lincoln Hall, who was left a day earlier when his own guides believed he was dead.

Some folks go through life singing, no matter what their circumstances. Such was a friend of mine, a little lady named Elsie, who died May 8, 2009 at the age of 95. One of the last things she did was to sing a hymn with her friends at her nursing home.