The preacher was doing the Children’s Minute during a church service.

“If I sold my house and my car, had a big garage sale and gave all my money to the church, would I get into heaven?” he asked the children.

“NO!” they answered.

“If I cleaned the church every day, mowed the yard, and kept everything neat and tidy, would I get into heaven?”

Again the answer was, “NO!”

“Well,” he continued, “Then how can I get into heaven?”

A five-year-old boy suddenly jumped up and shouted, “You gotta be dead!”

You have to admit, the kid had a good point.  Nobody is going to heaven until they’re dead.

Well, the body has to be dead.  Which makes it sound like we’re just sitting around waiting for it to die.

I guess in a way, that’s true.  But there’s so much more to life than waiting for the inevitable.

As a Christian, it is my responsibility to get to know God the best that I can and let Him worry about when my body will die.

This is what I believe:

Anyone who belongs to Christ is a new person. The past is forgotten, and everything is new.   2 Corinthians 5:17 (CEV)

New as in fresh, New as in all cleaned up and ready to go.  We’re not who we used to be.  Whatever our condition, morally and/or spiritually, it’s all brand spanking new!

I’ve been a Christian for – let’s see, 61 take away 17 – well, for a long time.  But do you know the really neat thing about it?  It’s still fresh and new. 

Only the Living Word can do that.  I just love it, don’t you?

 

 

 

 

I Say To-may-to, You Say To-mah-to

Several years ago, my husband David bought an SUV for me.

I remember telling my mother about it.  Then in her mid-80’s, she wasn’t grasping the concept of an SUV and kept asking how it was different from a regular car.

I was meeting both of my parents at a doctor’s office in the next few days, so I told her I would drive it then and she could see for herself.

On the appointed day, I drove my new SUV into the parking lot, knowing that my mother was glued to a window so she could see what the deal was.

 

When I opened the door to the office, however, I immediately saw that the waiting room was packed, and Mom and Daddy were not near a window.

As I approached them, Mom said, very brightly and in a voice that carried throughout the room, “Did you bring the SOB?”

“No,” I deadpanned, “I left him at home.” 

At which point my dad, then in his mid-90’s, laughed longer, louder and deeper than I had heard him laugh in years.

Photo by Jenny Wallace Webb

The Miracle of the Bed

When I was in 3^rd or 4^th grade, we lived in a little 3 bedroom, 1½ bath house in Huntsville, AL. 

I shared a bedroom with my sister, who was and still is 18 months younger than me.  We each had a twin bed on opposite walls of the small room.  One day while jumping on the beds (which was a no-no), a slat under the end of one of the mattresses slipped out and the mattress fell with a loud bump onto the wood floor.

We had broken the bed.

But we didn’t know it was just a displaced slat.  All we knew was that we had broken the bed and Daddy was mad about it.  He didn’t really say much anyway, so if his words were in anger, we thought the crime especially bad.

My dad got down on all fours, looked under the bed, did something, and healed it in the process.

“No jumping on the beds,” he said sternly.  My sister and I clung to each other and nodded.  Boy, that was something to steer clear of, for sure.

Sometime later, my parents invited a family to eat supper with us.  This family had one son, and he was about our age.  We knew them from our church, so it didn’t take us kids long to run to our room to play.

I don’t want to point any fingers here, but I believe it was our guest who suggested we jump on the beds.  Linda and I said, “No, no.  Last time we did that, we broke the bed.”

Our guest’s powers of persuasion were strong and our weak minds soon agreed that the forbidden fun would not result in another broken bed.

Wrong!  After some robust bouncing up and down, we heard a loud bump, and, to our horror, we realized we had once again broken the bed.

Amazingly, the adults didn’t hear it hit the floor.  They were in the living room having coffee and visiting.  We had some time to cover our tracks.

We tried fixing the bed; but, having no idea what the problem was, we had no idea how to repair it.  Our guest, who, of course, wanted to blame the bed for this awful turn of events, suggested we pray about it.

We all jumped (no pun intended) on this idea and started praying mightily.  We even prayed out loud – probably the first time any of us had done that.  We pleaded with God and Jesus and the Holy Ghost (as He was known to us then, way back yonder in the previous century).

Well, it seemed that God, Jesus and the Holy Ghost were not responding to our desperate prayers, so we decided to pray to anybody we could think of that was in the Bible.

We prayed to Moses and Noah, Samson and Delilah, all the disciples we could think of (similar to naming all Santa’s reindeer in that there’s always one or two you can’t remember).

When we ran out of names (which we did rather quickly), I sneaked out of the room to retrieve my Sunday School book for additional people to pray to.  We picked out the names we could pronounce, further lessening the number available to us.

We were sure the bed would miraculously be healed, and that would be the end of our troubles.

The wounded bed was not healed miraculously that night.  After our friends had gone home, we told Mom what had happened, hoping she could fix it and Daddy wouldn’t have to know.

Unfortunately, Mom didn’t know how, or didn’t have the strength to wrestle with the mattress, or just didn’t want to fool with it.  She called Daddy in and told him our pitiful story.

Daddy just sighed, got down on all fours, did something or another, and the bed was restored to its original state. 

And then he left the room.

No stern warnings, no anger, no nothing.

Linda and I climbed into our beds, breathless with the wonder of it all.  We didn’t get our miracle, but Daddy wasn’t mad so it didn’t matter.

Took me 40 years (and I mean that literally) to figure out that our miracle did come that night so long ago, it just wasn’t the one we were looking for.  We just hated to make Daddy mad at us, and he wasn’t mad at us, so there was our miracle!

I’m telling you, it’s a good lesson to learn.  Pray for a miracle and then keep your eyes open to everything.  Maybe it won’t take you 40 years to figure it out…

God is in Everything...

God is in everything…

It’s kind of a no-brainer to see God in everything today because we’re out in nature.  Well, the camper is out in nature, and it’s too hot to be outside, so this is as close as I get until it cools off later in the day.

But it is awesome to see His handiwork.  The beautiful hills covered with hundreds of shades of green; the majestic clouds sliding by high above, casting their shadows across the trees; the birds, big and small, some soaring, some gliding slowly, all looking for a bite to eat.

Yes, it’s easy to see God in this day. 

Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father keeps feeding them. Are you not worth much more than they?    Matthew 6:26 (AMP)

The Bible says that even though birds do not work for it, and therefore do not deserve it, God keeps feeding them.  He cares for each of his creatures, big and small, some soaring in their walks toward Him, some gliding slowly toward the prize of Jesus Christ, all looking for a bite to eat from God’s grace and loving kindness.

Pull up a chair and join us…

Photo by Cindy McGregor

 

The Wednesday Glide

I really tried,

 

       But my brain is fried.

My thinking cap died,

 

       My quips are snide.

 

My hands are tied,

 

       I cannot abide.

 

Next Wednesday will glide,

 

       The words will not hide…

                              

                

A Marriage Lesson

Many years ago, when the kids were in grade school and I worked full-time, I complained bitterly that my husband was not helping enough around the house.  I would hint and ask, ask and hint.  Nothing.  He wasn’t just naturally going to help out.  I didn’t think I should have to ask.  Couldn’t he see that things needed to be picked up?  Couldn’t he see the dust on every surface?

The fact that he was working 12-hour rotating shifts, his usual excuse, was to me pretty lame.  I was working full-time, too, you know.

At that time, I worked for our local mental health center as a secretary.  I was complaining to a co-worker, a counselor, that David was not helping out.  And when he finally did, he didn’t do it right.

Take the dishwasher, for example.  He loaded it all wrong.  He put the plastic stuff on the bottom where it would most certainly warp, he threw the silverware in its basket all mixed up and partially upside down, and he did not rinse things off before he loaded them into the dishwasher. 

My co-worker/counselor listened to all this very seriously and then said, “If you don’t let him do it his way, you’ll be doing it for the rest of your life.”

Whoa!  I had an immediate attitude adjustment.  I had a vision of me forever loading the dishwasher, one hand rubbing my aching back. 

Suddenly it didn’t matter how it was done.  Suddenly I realized that this was a matter of control, not dishwasher-loading style.

I practically ran in the door that afternoon and breathlessly told David that he could load the dishwasher any old way he wanted to.

He gave me that look that says, “What are you talking about?”  So I went on and told him that his style was fine, do it any way you want to, blah, blah, blah.  I was overcompensating just a little, I suppose, but I wanted to be sure he understood that I was allowing him to share the joy of dealing with dirty dishes.

He finally, out of self-defense, said, “Okay.” 

And thus it has been evermore…

By the way, today (June 12) is our 43rd anniversary...

The Marriage License Story

David and I have an anniversary next week, so this is probably the time to tell you my Marriage License Story.

It was 43 years ago when I went to the courthouse in Huntsville, Alabama to get our marriage license.  I was 18 so I could sign for myself.  But David was 20, and in the State of Alabama at that time, the groom had to be 21 to sign for himself. 

So there I was with David’s father, who was going to sign for him.  David wasn’t even there because he was in school in Birmingham, about 100 miles away.

We were in line with four or five couples ahead of us when I became aware of some of the clerks looking at Gus and I, kinda whispering, then looking, whispering, then looking.  I was sure they were talking about us, and I was right. 

When we got to the counter and Gus explained that he was there to sign for his son, the clerk sighed and said, “Oh, we thought the two of you were getting married.”

Well, I was absolutely shocked and outraged and righteously indignant.  The thought that somebody imagined me marrying this old man was appalling!  Years later, I realized that he was in his mid 40’s at the time.

Somehow that doesn’t seem so old now.