March 16, 2008

Because Easter Sunday is next weekend, The National Clothing Retailers association has come out with a public warning about how chocolate can affect different garments. They said, "Warning, chocolate may cause your cloths to shrink."

Even though a mosquito beats its wings 600 times per second it only travels about one mile per hour. That's because stopping to annoy people tends to slow you down.

For God so loved the world that he didn't send a committee
I called the police and told them I lost my parakeet and asked them what could be done. They said they would notify the Air Force.

What do frogs wear in the summer? Answer. Open toad sandals.

“Hit the ball over the fence and you can take your time going around the bases.” (John W Raper)
Much of the trouble in our day is from saying “yes” too quickly and “no” not quickly enough.
One of the great advantages of living in a democracy is that we have complete control over how we pay our taxes - cash, check, money order, or electronic transfer.

“Some want to live within the sound of church or chapel bells, I want to run a rescue shop within a yard of hell.”

Jesus was never afraid to step on someone’s toes.

There is not much I can do when folks gossip about me. But there is a great deal I can do when people gossip to me.
(Easter Thought.) When we suffer, we sense the comfort of Christ’s presence. When He suffered, He suffered alone and without comfort.
The angels were bickering about the presidential elections on earth. So the lead angel went to the Lord and asked Him to settle it. “Who,” he asked, “is Your choice, Sir?” God was quick to answer: “None of the below.”

A man is entitled to 16 wives. Do the math: four better, four worse, four richer, four poorer.


Q. What kind of motor vehicles are in the Bible?
A. Jehovah drove Adam and Eve out of the Garden in a Fury.
A. David's Triumph was heard throughout the land.
A. Honda...because the apostles were all in one Accord.
A. 2 Cor. 48 describes going out in service in a Volkswagen Beetle:"We are pressed in every way, but not cramped beyond movement."

Two hydrogen atoms meet. One says "I've lost my electron." The other says "Are you sure?" The first replies "Yes, I'm positive."

Thought for today: The stone at the tomb of Jesus was a pebble to the Rock of Ages inside.

I dreamed I was in the middle of a scorching desert and dying of thirst. I kept pushing on toward a sign in the distance, which, when I finally got to it, said “To know more about water, check out our website at …..”

I was awakened by my wife who said there was an intruder and she thought he was stealing her brownies and pies. ”Should I call the police or the ambulance?” I asked. The intruder was never apprehended and I’m still recovering.


Funbrain.com http://www.funbrain.com/
Funbrain claims to be the Internet's #1 education site for kindergarten through 12, kids and teachers. All games are Web-based and are grouped into arcades, Math, Fun for playtime and Games for the younger set under 6; there are also classic Funbrains as well as an Entertainment section. Activities can also be located by section, 'Art, Geography, History, Languages, Math, Music, Science and Technology,' all subdivided into grade level (don't be fooled, the lower grades can be as challenging as the higher ones!). We older generation never had learning made so much fun but sites like Funbrain can bring out the kid in all of us!


We are all faced with a series of great opportunities, brilliantly disguised as unsolvable problems. Unsolvable without God’s wisdom, that is. With His wisdom, they are changed to great opportunities. That change depends on our perspective. We are faced with a problem that seems to have no human solution. And perhaps it doesn’t. There is no end in view. It has all the marks of an endlessly impossible situation. But I have found this is the platform upon which God does His greatest work. The more impossible the situation, the greater God accomplishes His work. --Charles Swindoll

On My Account
In a Peanuts cartoon, Charlie Brown and Linus are standing next to each other, staring at a star-filled sky. "Would you like to see a falling star?" Charlie Brown asks Linus.
"Sure..." Linus responds. "Then again, I don't know," he adds, after some thought. "I'd hate to have it fall just on my account."
In the book Parables of Peanuts, Robert Short uses this cartoon to make the point that a star did fall on our account. God came down to us as Jesus: like a lamb led to slaughter, He died on our account. What humility. What love and, oh, what he accomplished there.
Charles Schultz, Peanuts, quoted by Robert Short

Mob Mentality
I’ve always thought that Jesus got himself crucified because he refused to be the kind of Messiah the people expected him to be. They wanted a revolutionary, didn’t they? Someone who would come in and free the Jews from Roman occupation. Someone who could be a grand king in the line of David, their favorite king of history. I thought that they just didn’t get what kind of Messiah Jesus was saying he was. I thought it was a case of mistaken identity. Jesus is not who they, or who we, thought he was. But if this were the case – if they wanted Jesus to be a certain kind of Messiah – if they were trying to force his hand – wouldn’t they realize sooner than his crucifixion that Jesus was not responding in the way they had hoped? If Jesus wasn’t the Messiah they were looking for, couldn’t they just ignore him? Couldn’t they just let him fade out of focus? Why did they act with such violence? Why was there no voice – no voice – standing up as an advocate for Jesus – no one who tried to save him from this death?
The more I think about it, the more I mull over the events of Jesus’ life in my mind, the more convinced I become that the reason we go so quickly from the crowds welcoming Jesus to the crowds yelling for his death is because they knew, and we know, exactly who Jesus is. For once, it seems everyone in the story is united in their actions towards Jesus. All of them, all of them, are united in their abandonment and rejection of Jesus. It is not just the Jews who act against him, but also the Romans. Not just the religious leaders, but also the common ‘regular’ people. Not just Judas, who we can readily write off as corrupted and evil, but also Peter, the faithful disciple, and the others, who never even get mentioned during all of Jesus’ trial, beatings, and crucifixion. Not one who Jesus healed, not one who Jesus forgave, not one who Jesus broke bread with speaks for him, acts on his behalf.


Eight Days
Eight days changed the world. These eight days have been the topic of a million of publications, countless debates, and thousands of films. These eight days have inspired the greatest painters, the most skilled architects, and the most gifted musicians. To try and calculate the cultural impact of these eight days is impossible. But harder still would be an attempt to account for the lives of men and women who have been transformed by them. And yet these eight days as they played out in Jerusalem were of little significance to anyone but a few people involved. What happened on those eight days? During the next eight Sundays of Lent and Easter we will look at these eight days in depth but for now let’s summarize:
1. On Sunday the first of the eight days, Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey to the shouts of Hosanna, fulfilling an old prophecy in Zechariah 9:9.
2. On Monday he walked into the Jerusalem Temple overturning tables where money exchange occurred, Roman drachmas were being exchanged for Jewish shekels. Roman coins were not allowed. The image of Caesar was a violation of the second commandment. But the Temple authorities were using the Commandment as means to cheat the people and making the Temple a place of profit rather than a place of prayer.
3. On Tuesday Jesus taught in parables, warned the people against the Pharisees, and predicted the destruction of the Temple.
4. On Wednesday, the fourth day, we know nothing. The Gospel writers are silent. Perhaps it was a day of rest for him and his weary and worried disciples.
5. On Thursday, in an upper room, Jesus celebrated the Passover meal with his disciples. But he gave it a new meaning. No longer would his followers remember the Exodus from Egypt in the breaking of bread. They would remember his broken body and shed blood. Later that evening in the Garden of Gethsemane he agonized in prayer at what lay ahead for him.
6. On Friday, the fifth day, following betrayal, arrest, imprisonment, desertion, false trials, denial, condemnation, beatings and sentencing, Jesus carried his own cross to “The Place of the Skull,” where he was crucified with two other prisoners.
7. On Saturday, Jesus lay dead in a tomb bought by a rich man named Joseph.
8. On Sunday, his Passion was over, the stone had been rolled away. Jesus was alive. He appeared to Mary, to Peter, to two disciples on the road to Emmaus, and to the 11 disciples gathered in a locked room. His resurrection was established as a fact.


In the midst of a generation screaming for answers, Christians are stuttering.
—Howard Hendricks.

Celebrity Jesus
Can you imagine if Jesus had been treated like a 20th-century celebrity as he rode into Jerusalem?
• Wolf Blitzer might have reported on rumors that Jesus planned to disrupt Temple business.
• Pundits would have argued about who he "really" was.
• Gail Sheehy would undoubtedly have written a psychological profile for Vanity Fair.
• Some tabloid would investigate Jesus' relationship with "the woman at the well."
• There would be in-depth analysis by cult specialists and modern-day Pharisees on MSNBC.
• A council of church officials would be in place to study the authenticity of Jesus' feeding the multitudes and walking on water.
• As he entered the dusty city, hundreds if not thousands would have snapped their throwaway Kodaks, and pointed their videocams while Katie Couric, along with Willard Scott, making a special appearance, would stand by to offer color commentary.

The Origins of the Palm Branches
The palm branches and the shouts harked back a century-and-a-half to the triumph of the Maccabees and the overthrow of the brutal Antiochus Epiphanes, the Saddam Hussein of his day. In 167 B.C. Antiochus had precipitated a full-scale revolt when, having already forbidden the practice of Judaism on pain of death, he set up, right smack in the middle of the Jewish temple, an altar to Zeus and sacrificed a pig on it. Hard to imagine a greater slap in the religious face to good Jews. Stinging from this outrage, an old man of priestly stock named Mattathias rounded up his five sons, all the weapons he could find, and a guerrilla war was launched. Old Mattathias soon died, but his son Judas, called Maccabeus (which means "hammer"), kept on and within three years was able to cleanse and to rededicate the desecrated temple.
"Mission Accomplished?" Well, it would be a full 20 years more of fighting, after Judas and a successor brother, Jonathan, had died in battle, that a third brother, Simon, took over, and through his diplomacy achieved Judean independence. That would begin a century of Jewish sovereignty.
Of course, there was great celebration. "On the twenty-third day of the second month, in the one hundred and seventy-first year, the Jews entered Jerusalem with praise and palm branches, and with harps and cymbals and stringed instruments, and with hymns and songs, because a great enemy had been crushed and removed from Israel.” So says the account in I Maccabees - a story as well known to the crowd in Jerusalem that day as George Washington and the defeat of the British is known to us.
Lest we be too critical of Jerusalem, ask yourself this question: What city even today would not be shaken by Jesus' entry into it? Imagine Jesus entering New York, Belgrade, Washington, or even Memphis. Oh, I'm sure we'd welcome him with our hosannas - at first, anyway. We'd line the streets and strike up the band and have a grand parade right down Main Street. But I'm equally sure that, by the end of the week, we'd have him nailed to a cross, too. Why? Because the Kingdom Jesus came to establish still threatens the kingdoms of this world -- your kingdom and mine -- the kingdoms where greed, power, and lust rule instead of grace, mercy, and peace. And who among us really wants to surrender our lives to that Kingdom and that King?


Years ago, CBS had a popular little series called Gilligan's Island. Most of
us watched it. There is, however, a dark secret about this "comedy" you may
never have realized. The island is a direct representation of HELL.
Nobody on the island wants to be there, yet none are able to leave. Each one
of the characters represents one of the 7 deadly sins:
Ginger represents LUST - she wears skimpy outfits, is obsessed with her
looks, and is a borderline nymphomaniac.
Mary Ann represents ENVY - she is jealous of Ginger's beauty.
The Professor represents PRIDE - he is an annoying know-it-all. Mr. Howell represents GREED - no explanation needed.
Mrs. Howell represents SLOTH - she has never lifted a finger to help on any
of their escape plans.
The Skipper represents two sins: GLUTTONY - again, no explanation needed and
ANGER - he violently hits Gilligan on each show.
This leaves Gilligan. Gilligan is the person who put them there. He prevents
them from leaving by foiling all of their escape plots. Also, it is HIS island. Therefore, Gilligan is SATAN. Crazy? Well, he does wear red in every episode!.


The 50-50-90 rule. Anytime you have a 50-50 chance of getting something right, there's a 90% probability you'll get it wrong.