One of the most stirring lines in all of Scripture comes when Esther is challenged by Mordecai to intercede on behalf of her fellow Jews.  The risk?  It might potentially cost her life.  Despite the fact that she is young and only recently married to the king (who has issued the decree to exterminate the Jews), Esther sends these words back to Mordecai: Then Esther sent this reply to Mordecai:  "Go, gather together all the Jews who are in Susa, and fast for me. Do not eat or drink for three days, night or day. I and my maids will fast as you do. When this is done, I will go to the king, even though it is against the law. And if I perish, I perish." (Esther 4:15-16). Wow!  Kind of makes your hair stand up.

For our communion meditation tonight, I spoke of how John F. Kennedy's challenge to the nation sounded like something spoken nearly 2,000 years before. Kennedy: "Ask not what your country can do for; ask what you can do for your country." Jesus: "My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will." The way of a Christ-follower is to choose a divine path over our own preferred route.

I first became familiar with Dan Pink while watching one of his TED presentations online. He writes a great blog post about the difference between failure and mediocrity.  Here it is: Most people are more frightened of failure than of mediocrity. It should be the reverse. Failure is a broken leg — painful, but easily fixed. Mediocrity is a creeping disease — invisible and insidious — that disables so completely that there’s often no recovery.

When you're drinking coffee in a restaurant and order decaf, it's likely the coffee will be delivered in a glass pot with an orange band at the top. Ever wonder where that came from? The orange label came about in 1923 when Sanka, the first commercial decaf coffee, appeared on grocery store shelves.  When General Foods bought Sanka in 1932, they looked for a way to promote the coffee to restaurants.  Since the Sanka can was orange at the time, General Foods put an orange band at the top of the pots and gave them away free to restaurants.  Customers came to associate the orange-banded pots with Sanka, and eventually it became the generic color for all decaf coffee brands.

Stephen von Worley on Weather Sealed posted this chronological growth of Crayola colors from the line-up of original eight introduced in 1903 by Binney & Smith to the 133 colors available today. By von Worley’s calculations, Crayola colors double every 28 years.  Click the image to enlarge. Read the full article.