April 12 Easter

Last night, my wife and I were sitting in the living room and I said to her, "I never want to live in a vegetative state, dependent on some machine and fluids from a bottle. If that ever happens, just pull the plug."
So she got up, unplugged the TV, and threw out my soda.

A well-known statistic: A church which is 0 – 3 years old requires 3 attendees to reach 1 person for Christ. A church which is 3 – 10 years old requires 7 attendees to reach 1 person for Christ. And a church older than 10 years old requires 89 attendees to reach 1 person for Christ. In other words, as the church gets older and older, it becomes harder to keep evangelism on the front burner because of all the “compelling issues” that keep pushing it back.

Take the time to open this website. The pictures are beautiful and the message is great. America, My Beautiful America http://objflicks.com/mybeautifulamerica.htm

Edward Gibbons, in his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, offers five reasons why the Roman Empire crumbled:
* Family life disintegrated.
* All ethical systems were discarded.
* The world of entertainment became immoral and corrupt.
* The cost of maintaining the empire’s military system became enormous.
* The empire’s economy collapsed.

Food for thought in relation to today’s world!
* The Old Testament is an inspired account of a failed mission.
* The New Testament is an inspired account of a corrected mission.
* The history of the Christian church is a human account of a confused mission.

Importance of Walking
-----Walking can add minutes to your life. This enables you at 85 years old to spend an additional 5 months in a nursing home at $5000 per month.
My grandmother started walking five miles a day when she was 60. Now she's 97 years old and we don't know where the heck she is.
I joined a health club last year, spent about $400. Haven't lost a pound. Apparently you have to go there.
I have to exercise early in the morning before my brain figures out what I'm doing.
I like long walks, especially when they are taken by people who annoy me.

Biblical Bumper Stickers:
Adam: "You are what you eat."
Eve: "At least he doesn't compare me to his mother."
Abraham: "I'm goin' not knowin'."
Noah: "Honk if you believe in treading water."
Moses: "From a basket case to the promised land."
Elijah: "When Jezebel ain't happy, ain't nobody happy."
Prodigal Son: "All roads lead to home."
At the Sinai desert: "Winding road next 40 years."
At the Red Sea: "Caution! Subject to sudden flooding."

According to a survey from Scott Paper Company:
* You can gauge a person's education by whether they read in the bathroom.
* More than 2/3 of the people with a master's degree and doctorates read in the stall.
* Only one in two high school grads read while in the bathroom, and 56 percent of those with college degrees do.
* Fifty-four percent of Americans fold their toilet tissue neatly while 35 percent wad it into a ball before using it.
* Seven percent steal rolls of toilet paper (hotels/motels)
* More than sixty percent prefer that their toilet paper roll over the top, twenty-nine percent from the bottom. The rest don't care.

A story is told of a little girl who while walking in a garden noticed a particularly beautiful flower. She admired its beauty and enjoyed its fragrance.
"It's so pretty!" she exclaimed. As she gazed on it, her eyes followed the stem down to the soil in which it grew.
"This flower is too pretty to be planted in such dirt!" she cried. So she pulled it up by its roots and ran to the water faucet to wash away the soil. It wasn't long until the flower wilted and died.
When the gardener saw what the little girl had done, he exclaimed, "You have destroyed my finest plant!"
"I'm sorry, but I didn't like it in that dirt," she said. The gardener replied,
"I chose that spot and mixed the soil because I knew that only there could it grow to be a beautiful flower."
God has placed us exactly where we are. We must trust him. In the trusting we eventually see that God is using our pressures, trials, and difficulties to bring us to a new degree of spiritual beauty. True Contentment comes when we accept what God is doing and thank him for it. Kevin Litchfield

The early bird gets the worm. But...the second mouse gets the cheese.

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Seven Deadly Sins - One person said banks are engaged in “seven deadly sins”: greedy loan growth, gluttony of real estate, lust for high yields, sloth-like risk management, pride of low capital, envy of exotic fees, and anger of regulators.

"Jesus' resurrection is the first fruit of ours. His complete victory over death and sin is our promised complete victory over death and sin."

God Cannot Die Martin Luther once spent three days in a black depression over something that had gone wrong. On the third day his wife came downstairs dressed in mourning clothes. "Who's dead?" he asked her. "God," she replied. Luther rebuked her, saying, "What do you mean, God is dead? God cannot die." "Well," she replied, "the way you've been acting I was sure He had!"
Many of us have been caught in that trap. This is also what had happened to Mary.

Subject: 43c Stamp
I don't understand these complaints about the postal service. Time was, you could put a two-cent stamp on a letter and mail it, and it would arrive at its destination in two days...a penny a day. Now you put a forty-three-cent stamp on a letter and it can take five to six weeks to arrive..... Still only a penny a day!

"Talent made a poor appearance. Until he married Perseverance." -- Arthur Guiterman

"Laughter is inner jogging." -- Norman Cousins

I ask the Lord to bless you, as I pray for you today; to guide you and protect you, as you go along your way. God's love is always with you, God's promises are true. And when you give God all your cares, you know God will see you through.