God Wasn’t Kidding

Whenever your kids are out of control, you can take comfort from the thought that even God’s omnipotence did not extend to God’s kids.

After creating heaven and earth, God created Adam and Eve.

And the first thing he said was: “Don’t”.

“Don’t what?” Adam replied.

“Don’t eat the forbidden fruit,” God said.

“Forbidden fruit?”

“We got forbidden fruit?”

“Hey, Eve…we got forbidden fruit!”

“No way!”

“Way!”

“Don’t eat that fruit!” said God.

“Why?”

“Because I am your Father and I said so!” said God, wondering why he hadn’t stopped after making the elephants.

A few minutes later God saw his kids having an apple break and was angry.

“Didn’t I tell you not to eat the fruit?” the First Parent asked.

“Uh huh,” Adam replied.

“Then why did you?”

“I dunno” Eve answered.

“She started it!” Adam said.

“Did not!”

“Did too!”

“DID NOT!!”

Having had it with the two of them, God’s punishment was that Adam and Eve should have children of their own. Thus, the pattern was set and it has never changed.

But there is reassurance in this story. If you have persistently and lovingly tried to give them wisdom and they haven’t taken it, don’t be hard on yourself. If God had trouble handling children, what makes you think it would be a piece of cake for you?

Eye Witness

Patient: “Doctor, doctor!  I keep seeing spots before my eyes!”

Doctor: “Have you seen an ophthalmologist?”

Patient: “No, just spots.”

It doesn’t matter what temperature the room is, it’s always room temperature.

Change is good! But dollars are better.

Children don’t actually sleep; they just recharge.

You Might Be A Pastor If…

~ You hesitate to tell people what you do for a living.

~ You’ve ever dreamed you were preaching only to awaken and discover you were.

~ You’ve ever wondered why people couldn’t die at more appropriate times.

~ A church picnic is no picnic.

~ People sleep while you’re talking.

~ Instead of getting “ticked off,” you get “grieved in your spirit.”

~ You’d rather talk to people with every head bowed and every eye closed.

~ You’ve ever wanted to “lay hands” around a deacon’s neck.


Q: Why does a tiger have stripes?

A: So he won’t be spotted.

Con-Censes

Employer: “Where did you receive your training?”

Applicant: “Yale.”

Employer: “Great, what’s your name?”

Applicant: “Yim Yohnson.”

Phenomenal Undertaking

A man walked into a haunted house wanting to get a picture of a ghost with his instamatic camera. After a couple hours, he finally saw one. It was a friendly ghost who actually posed for the picture.

The man took the first picture, but it turned out too dark. So the ghost posed for another one, and the picture again turned out dark.

The ghost had to go so the man did not get a picture.

Goes to show that the spirit was willing but the flash was weak.

Miner Problem

Becky, a gold miner’s daughter, dearly loved Clem, but was too shy to tell him.

One day she learned that Clem was about to marry someone else, so she got her courage up and decided to find Clem, stop the wedding if necessary, and tell him how she felt. She had saddled her horse and was about to leave, when her father appeared and wanted to know why she was in such a hurry.

“Oh, father,” cried Becky, “I hope I can find my darling Clem in time!

I went out with a coal miner’s daughter. I guess you could say I was carbon dated.

Dolphins are so smart that within a few weeks of captivity, they can train people to stand on the very edge of a pool and throw them fish.

I thought I wanted a career, but it turns out I just wanted paychecks.

You do not need a parachute to skydive. You definitely need a parachute to skydive twice.

When tempted to fight fire with fire, remember that the Fire Department usually uses water.

You’re never too old to learn something stupid.

To be sure of hitting the target, shoot first and call whatever you hit the target.

Nostalgia isn’t what it used to be.

Englandish

Let’s face it.
English is an odd language.
There is no egg in the eggplant,
No ham in the hamburger,
And neither pine nor apple in the pineapple.
English muffins were not invented in England.
French fries were not invented in France.

We sometimes take English for granted,
But if we examine its paradoxes we find that
Quicksand takes you down slowly,
Boxing rings are square,
And a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig.

If writers write, how come fingers don’t fing.
If the plural of tooth is teeth,
Shouldn’t the plural of phone booth be phone beeth?
If the teacher taught,
Why didn’t the preacher praught.

If a vegetarian eats vegetables,
What the heck does a humanitarian eat!?
Why do people recite at a play,
Yet play at a recital?
Park on driveways and
Drive on parkways?

You have to marvel at the unique lunacy
Of a language where a house can burn up as
It burns down,
And in which you fill in a form
By filling it out,
And a bell is only heard once it goes!

English was invented by people, not computers,
And it reflects the creativity of the human race
(Which of course isn’t a race at all).

That is why
When the stars are out they are visible,
But when the lights are out they are invisible.
And why it is that when I wind up my watch
It starts,
But when I wind up this poem
It ends.

Seagulls

It happens every Friday evening, almost without fail, when the sun
resembles a giant orange and is starting to dip into the blue ocean.
Old Ed comes strolling along the beach to his favorite pier. Clutched
in his bony hand is a bucket of shrimp.

Ed walks out to the end of the pier, where it seems he almost has the
world to himself. The glow of the sun is a golden bronze now. Everybody’s gone, except for a few joggers on the beach.
Standing out on the end of the pier, Ed is alone with his thoughts….and his bucket of shrimp.

Before long, however, he is no longer alone. Up in the sky a thousand
white dots come screeching and squawking, winging their way toward that lanky frame standing there on the end of the pier.
Before long, dozens of seagulls have enveloped him, their wings fluttering and flapping wildly.
Ed stands there tossing shrimp to the hungry birds. As he does, if you listen closely, you can hear him say with a smile,
‘Thank you. Thank you.’

In a few short minutes the bucket is empty. But Ed doesn’t leave. He
stands there lost in thought, as though transported to another time and place.
Invariably, one of the gulls lands on his sea-bleached, weather-beaten hat – an old military hat he’s been wearing for years.
When he finally turns around and begins to walk back toward the beach,
a few of the birds hop along the pier with him until he gets to the stairs, and they, too, fly away.
And old Ed quietly makes his way down to the end of the beach and on home.

If you were sitting there on the pier with your fishing line in the water,
Ed might seem like ‘a funny old duck,’ as my dad used to say. Or, ‘a guy
that’s a sandwich shy of a picnic,’ as my kids might say. To onlookers,
he’s just another old codger, lost in his own weird world, feeding the
seagulls with a bucket full of shrimp.

To the onlooker, rituals can look either very strange or very empty.
They can seem altogether unimportant….maybe even a lot of nonsense.
Old folks often do strange things, at least in the eyes of Boomers and Busters.
Most of them would probably write Old Ed off, down there in Florida.

That’s too bad. They’d do well to know him better.
His full name: Eddie Rickenbacker.
He was a famous hero back in World War II.
On one of his flying missions across the Pacific, he and his seven-member crew went down.
Miraculously, all of the men survived, crawled out of their plane, and climbed into a life raft.
Captain Rickenbacker and his crew floated for days on the rough waters of the Pacific.
They fought the sun. They fought sharks. Most of all, they fought hunger.
By the eighth day their rations ran out. No food. No water.
They were hundreds of miles from land and no one knew where they were.
They needed a miracle.
That afternoon they had a simple devotional service and prayed for a miracle.
They tried to nap. Eddie leaned back and pulled his military cap over his nose.
Time dragged. All he could hear was the slap of the waves against the raft.

Suddenly, Eddie felt something land on the top of his cap. It was a seagull!
Old Ed would later describe how he sat perfectly still, planning his next move.
With a flash of his hand and a squawk from the gull, he managed to grab it and wring its neck.
He tore the feathers off, and he and his starving crew made a meal – a very slight meal for eight men – of it.
Then they used the intestines for bait. With it, they caught fish, which gave them food and more bait……and the cycle continued.
With that simple survival technique, they were able to endure the rigors of the sea until they were found and rescued.

(after 24 days at sea…)

Eddie Rickenbacker lived many years beyond that ordeal, but he never forgot the sacrifice of that first lifesaving seagull.
And he never stopped saying, ‘Thank you.’
That’s why almost every Friday night he would walk to the end of the pier with a bucket full of shrimp and a heart full of gratitude.

PS: Rickenbacker was a pilot during WW I who became an ace and was presented with The Medal of Honor.
He went on to be a race car driver, an aviation consultant, and airline executive.
He brought together two existing airlines to become Eastern airlines that went on to become a major presence in commercial aviation.

 

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