So enjoy an actual lesson from a teacher about the Reformation. Reformed/always reforming!

These are making the rounds again, but are still incredibly funny.  I got them from this blog, but they originally came from a 1999 Washington Post humor contest.  Enjoy.

1. Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two sides gently compressed by a ThighMaster.

2. His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like underpants in a dryer without Cling Free.

3. He spoke with the wisdom that can only come from experience, like a guy who went blind because he looked at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it and now goes around the country speaking at high schools about the dangers of looking at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it.

4. She grew on him like she was a colony of E. Coli, and he was room-temperature Canadian beef.

5. She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes just before it throws up.

6. Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.

7. He was as tall as a six-foot, three-inch tree.

8. The revelation that his marriage of 30 years had disintegrated because of his wife’s infidelity came as a rude shock, like a surcharge at a formerly surcharge-free ATM machine.

9. The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn’t.

10. McBride fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like a Hefty bag filled with vegetable soup.

11. From the attic came an unearthly howl. The whole scene had an eerie, surreal quality, like when you’re on vacation in another city and Jeopardy comes on at 7:00 p.m. instead of 7:30.

12. Her hair glistened in the rain like a nose hair after a sneeze.

13. The hailstones leaped from the pavement, just like maggots when you fry them in hot grease.

14. Long separated by cruel fate, the star-crossed lovers raced across the grassy field toward each other like two freight trains, one having left Cleveland at 6:36 p.m. traveling at 55 mph, the other from Topeka at 4:19 p.m. at a speed of 35 mph.

15. They lived in a typical suburban neighborhood with picket fences that resembled Nancy Kerrigan’s teeth.

16. John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met.

17. He fell for her like his heart was a mob informant, and she was the East River.

18. Even in his last years, Granddad had a mind like a steel trap, only one that had been left out so long it had rusted shut.

19. Shots rang out, as shots are wont to do.

20. The plan was simple, like my brother-in-law Phil. But unlike Phil, this plan just might work.

21. The young fighter had a hungry look, the kind you get from not eating for a while.

22. He was as lame as a duck. Not the metaphorical lame duck, either, but a real duck that was actually lame, maybe from stepping on a land mine or something.

23. The ballerina rose gracefully en Pointe and extended one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant.

24. It was an American tradition, like fathers chasing kids around with power tools.

25. He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as if she were a garbage truck backing up.

I believe 14 year old Victor Manuel Watters had a good understanding.  Check out his story here.  Just a snippet:

Victor turned to me intently and said, “Mom, if I go … I mean soon … will you tell my family about God, about Jesus?” Then his eyes grew fierce as he clarified, “I mean really try?” And I promised as the tears rolled some more. Then we talked about making a video so that he could say what he wanted to them and others … and he asked if I would help him. Yes sir.

There are times when I just happen to remember such moments, and the pain is so great I want to curl up in a ball and hide.  It’s a little dangerous to do so when driving.  All the shame and guilt wash over me, and I stand face to face with the worst part of myself.

But in Christ I am forgiven.  (This is not to say that I should not make amends where possible.  I am discussing our standing before God). ” Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies.  Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised— who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us.” (Romans 8:33-34).  And as deep and just as my guilt is, Christ’s forgiveness is greater still.

Read the article here.  Just a snippet:

What I did and said in 1995 was shameful and sinful and worthy of my being condemned for eternity. But Jesus has dealt with it, and letting shame linger today is a different kind of sinful disobedience (See Pastor John, Battling the Unbelief of Misplaced Shame).

Prepare yourself today, Christian! I didn’t know I would be walking down those halls again. And you don’t know when you’ll be surprised by memories of your past shameful behavior, with your own heart and the evil one accusing you with evidence from your own life.

But God knows. And Jesus is enough.

Martha Myers

I just read this account of and SBC missionary to Yemen. Many would consider her death a tragedy, but God has used her life and death in a glorious way. Just an excerpt:

“On December 30th of 2002 three workers at the Baptist hospital in Yemen were shot and killed, including Martha who was 57. She had treated the killer’s wife for infertility. When the gunner was asked why he killed these workers he said that after the way Martha had been so kind to his wife he knew she had to be stopped because if she wasn’t she would bring all of Yemen to Jesus.”

Martha’s life was not wasted.  A wasted life would have been huddled at home in safety and comfort, afraid to put it on the line for the gospel of Christ.  It is ten years later and people are being saved because of the life and death of this martyr.

Read the full account here

I know of one pastor who chose this passage to be read at his wedding:

Though the fig tree should not blossom, nor fruit be on the vines, the produce of the olive fail and the fields yield no food, the flock be cut off from the fold and there be no herd in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the LORD; I will take joy in the God of my salvation.
(Habakkuk 3:17-18)

Imagine praying that I could lose all my money, all my business, all my food, everything I have, and yet I will be joyful because of God’s salvation. If I have Christ, I don’t need anything else, including this life.

I have been listening to this song regularly.  The animation is simple but powerful.  In the end, all I have, and all I need, is Christ.

10. At the evening service tonight, the sermon topic will be “What is Hell?” Come early and listen to our choir practice.

9. The pastor would appreciate it if the ladies of the congregation would lend him their electric girdles for the pancake breakfast next Sunday morning.

8. The pastor will preach his farewell message, after which the choir will sing, “Break Forth Into Joy.”

7. Irving Benson and Jessie Carter were married on October 24 in the church. So ends a friendship that began in their school days.

6. Announcement in the church bulletin for a National Prayer and Fasting Conference: “The cost for attending the Fasting and Prayer Conference includes meals.”

5. Charlene Mason sang “I Will Not Pass This Way Again,” giving obvious pleasure to the congregation.

4. Next Sunday is the family hayride and bonfire at the Fowlers. Bring your own hot dogs and guns.

3. The church will host an evening of fine dining, superb entertainment, and gracious hostility.

2. For those of you who have children and don’t know it, we have a nursery downstairs.

1. Ladies, don’t forget the rummage sale. It’s a chance to get rid of those things not worth keeping around the house. Don’t forget your husbands.

“Claire” usually wears a bright blonde wig placed obviously over her own still-dark hair. Sometimes she has her teeth in, but not usually. Either way you are guaranteed to be greeted with a huge smile beneath squinty, cheerful eyes. When she says “hi” her voice goes up, up, up and back down all in one syllable—like a roller coaster peak, or maybe a steep sine wave, but I never took calculus so I don’t know for sure. I do know that no packet of Sweet ‘n Low is safe when Claire’s around though. Yes, Claire is quite a character. I often wonder what she was like before Alzheimer’s.

Wednesday night is prayer meeting night at our church. The little group that gathers for dinner at six o’clock is joined by a few more when the service officially starts at seven. Before the Bible study part of the hour we divide into small groups and all pray aloud for a few minutes. One by one the groups all go silent as they finish praying for one another and the church. Eventually the whole room falls silent in prayer until our pastor concludes it with a brief word and an “amen.”

I hope I never forget last Wednesday’s little gathering. As each group of two or three sat in prayerful silence, all of us could hear one person in one group still praying out loud. Seated as she always is with her husband, it was Claire’s turn to pray. By default we all sat eavesdropping on this one small voice. There in the silence of a room full of people Claire prayed as though only Jesus could hear her. Said with a slow and careful reverence, we all heard the same childlike words of faith God was hearing,

Dear Jesus, Thank you for being my Savior. You are my Savior and I love you. Thank you for my husband and our church and our pastor. I love you Jesus. You are my Savior.

If ever I sat in a holy moment, it was that one. Claire’s once agile mind, now racked with all the altering cruelties the disease could press upon it, could not be diminished in expressing the deepest loyalties of her heart. The atheist Richard Dawkins himself would have been converted if he heard her tender sincerity.

Alzheimer’s is not the only illness inside Claire. While it is attacking her mind another is attacking her body. How much longer she has is known only by her Savior. Even so, the very thing that has made Christianity unique everywhere it has been proclaimed is no less true for Claire: Resurrection. The “living hope” as Peter calls it; just as the Lord Jesus Christ defeated the damning effects of sin and triumphed over the hopeless grave, so now we who hope in Him need no longer despair that which comes to us all.

Someday, because of Jesus Christ, Claire will have vitality in mind and body like she’s never had on earth. A glorified, sinless vitality. Eternal life. And when that day comes she will look at her Lord and say with perfect clarity, “Dear Jesus, Thank you for being my Savior. You are my Savior and I love you.”