ODJ: one source

During October the trees come alive with colour in my region. One year a particular tree caught my attention. Like Joseph, it wore a ‘coat’ of many colours. Its top leaves were plum coloured. A little lower the purple morphed into crimson foliage. The red gave way to robin’s-chest orange and, finally, neon yellow leaves peeked out at the bottom like a petticoat. Although the leaves had radic

ODB: All Together

For years my wife’s piano and my banjo had an uncomfortable and infrequent relationship. Then, after Janet bought me a new guitar for my birthday, she expressed an interest in learning to play my old guitar. She is a very capable musician, and soon we were, together, playing songs of praise on our guitars. I like to think that a new kind of “praise connection” has filled our home.When the ps

ODJ: with us

Harrison Odjegba Okene had been trapped 100 feet underwater for more than 72 hours. His air and his hope were running thin. The Nigerian was a cook on a tugboat that sank in the Atlantic Ocean in May 2013, leading to the deaths of the 11 other crew members. Harrison, however, found his way to a small cabin with a small, dwindling air pocket where he shivered as temperatures plummeted. Comforted by

ODB: First Response

When my husband, Tom, was rushed to the hospital for emergency surgery, I began to call family members. My sister and her husband came right away to be with me, and we prayed as we waited. Tom’s sister listened to my anxious voice on the phone and immediately said, “Cindy, can I pray with you?” When my pastor and his wife arrived, he too prayed for us (James 5:13-16).Oswald Chambers wrote:

ODJ: “who touched Me?”

It is said that the number one fear in life is public speaking, ranking higher than even the fear of death. As a comedian once observed, that means that at a funeral, people would rather be in the coffin than give the eulogy!
With that in mind, Jesus’ request that the bleeding woman identify herself seems almost like a punishment (Mark 5:30). After all, she had already been healed—why not

ODB: Tiny Island

Singapore is a tiny island. It’s so small that one can hardly spot it on the world map. (Try it, if you don’t already know where Singapore is.) Because it is densely populated, consideration of others is especially important. A man wrote to his fiancée who was coming to Singapore for the first time: “Space is limited. Therefore . . . you must always have that sense of space around you. Yo

ODJ: the risk of love

The Grant Study has followed the lives of more than 250 university graduates for 70 years to learn what makes people happy. It revealed that positive emotions make us more vulnerable than negative ones—in part because they expose us to rejection and heartbreak. One man had received a box of 100 loving letters from his patients when he retired from practising medicine. Eight years later he proudl

ODB: Clean The Closet

To this day I can still hear my mother telling me to go and clean up my room. Dutifully, I would go to my room to start the process, only to get distracted by reading the comic book that I was supposed to put neatly in the stack. But soon the distraction was interrupted by my mother warning that she would be up in 5 minutes to inspect the room. Unable to effectively clean the room in that time, I

ODJ: temptations we face

This is the last snack I’m going to eat today, you tell yourself. Then 5 minutes later you’re looking for another one! Michael Moss, in his book Salt Sugar Fat, reveals how food companies study ways to ‘help’ people crave junk food. Some of the food industry’s biggest names hire ‘crave consultants’ to determine people’s ‘bliss points’—the conditions when foo