Let’s All Turn Our Wallets To Page 20

The pastor stood up one Sunday and announced to his congregation:

“I have good news and bad news. The good news is that we have enough money to pay for our new building program! The bad news is that it’s still out there in your pockets.”

I hate it when I think I’m buying ORGANIC vegetables, but when I get home they’re REGULAR donuts.

Honor Your Honor

During his wedding rehearsal, the groom approached his pastor with an unusual offer. “I’ll give you $100 if you’ll change the wedding vows, and leave out the ‘love, honor, obey, and forsake all others’ part.” He pressed a $100 bill in the pastor’s hand and walked away with a satisfied smile.

On the day of the wedding, the groom was feeling pretty pleased when the pastor got to the part where the vows are exchanged.  The pastor looked him in the eye and asked, “Will you promise to bow before her, obey whatever command she gives, fulfill her every wish, serve her breakfast each morning, and swear before God that you’ll not look at another woman as long as you both shall life?”

The groom gulped and looked astonished, but he finally said “Yes” in a tiny voice. He then leaned in toward the pastor and whispered, “I thought we had a deal!”

The pastor pressed the $100 bill back into his hand and whispered in return,

“She made me a much better offer.”

Squirrel Fodder

On the outskirts of a small town, there was a big, old pecan tree just inside the cemetery fence. One day, two boys filled up a bucketful of nuts and sat down by the tree, out of sight, and began dividing the nuts.”One for you, one for me. One for you, one for me,” said one boy. Several dropped and rolled down toward the fence.

Another boy came riding along the road on his bicycle. As he passed, he thought he heard voices from inside the cemetery. He slowed down to investigate. Sure enough, he heard, “One for you, one for me. One for you, one for me.”

He just knew what it was. He jumped back on his bike and rode off. Just around the bend he met an old man with a cane, hobbling along. “Come here quick,” said the boy, “you won’t believe what I heard! Satan and the Lord are down at the cemetery dividing up the souls.”

The man said, “Beat it kid, can’t you see it’s hard for me to walk.” When the boy insisted though, the man hobbled slowly to the cemetery. Standing by the fence they heard, “One for you, one for me. One for you, one for me…”

The old man whispered, “Boy, you’ve been tellin’ me the truth. Let’s see if we can see the Lord.” Shaking with fear, they peered through the fence, yet were still unable to see anything. The old man and the boy gripped the wrought iron bars of the fence tighter and tighter as they tried to get a glimpse of the Lord. At last they heard, “One for you, one for me. That’s all. Now let’s go get those nuts by the fence and we’ll be done.”

They say the old man made it back to town a full 5 minutes ahead of the kid on the bike.

Snoredom

Blanche: Herb, if you don’t stop snoring, I’m going to toss you out on your ear!

Herb: Does it upset you that much?

Blanche: Not just me, the entire congregation.

Hill Drill

Working on Capitol Hill, my husband was under constant pressure.

After one late-night session, he came home exhausted and went straight to bed. When I turned out the light, he sat up in a panic. “Is everything okay in the house?” he asked.

“Yes, honey,” I answered. “I locked the doors and turned down the heat.”

“That’s good,” he said, lying back down, his eyelids heavy. “What about the Senate?”

Playing Catch Up

A Sunday School teacher asked her class, “Does anyone here know what we mean by sins of omission?”

A small girl replied: “Aren’t those the sins we should have committed, but didn’t?”

Pat On The Back

A little girl, dressed in her Sunday best, was running as fast as she could, trying not to be late for Bible class. As she ran she prayed, “Dear Lord, please don’t let me be late! Dear Lord, please don’t let me be late!”

As she was running and praying, she tripped on a curb and fell, getting her clothes dirty and tearing her dress. She got up, brushed herself off, and started running again.

As she ran she once again began to pray, “Dear Lord, please don’t let me be late!…But don’t shove me either.”

Eggstraordinary

The devil told the pope, “No one in the world has a better memory than I do.”

The Pope responded, “Oh! Well I know this Native American guy who has the best memory in the world and I’ll even prove it.”

Then the devil replied, “OK, I’ll take your offer and if I have a better memory I get your soul.”

“It’s a deal” replied the Pope. Then they shook hands to make the deal official.

They went to a remote village in North America. There they met Roaming Bull (the Native American the Pope was talking about).

The devil asked him, “Do you like eggs?”

The Native American replied, “Yes.”

50 years passed. Everyone is still alive and have forgotten about the deal. However the devil remembered the deal and went back to the village and greeted the Native American saying, “How.”

He replied “Scrambled.”



Hissterical

Two snakes are talking about the social airs being put on by an old acquaintance.

“Just think,” says one, “I knew her back when she didn’t have a pit to hiss in.”

Joel McCrea on God’s Guidance

If my experience in motion pictures has taught me anything, it is this: No mere man is clever enough to control all the forces which must work together for all-around success in life. I do not believe in luck, nor can I take personal credit for the piloting of my own career.

While attending Hollywood High School, my fellow students said I lacked “get-up-and-go.” Though ambitious, I seemed to lack drive. But my dreams were of the wide spaces, open sky and a cattle ranch.

Hollywood was a smaller town then, and my newspaper route was star-studded. As a boy, I tossed the Los Angeles Times on the doorstep of Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks. I was on friendly terms with others of my customers: Gloria Swanson, Wallace Reid, Cecil B. de Mille and William S. Hart.

Hart was a famous silent-screen cowboy actor. Each time I threw a paper on his porch, I imagined that my delivery bike was a horse and for a moment the paved street was a cactus-studded range.

During the summers, I worked for the King Cattle Company in the Tehachapi Mountains, where I was taught to ride the range and to farm.

To achieve my goal of a ranch, I needed capital. Acting would be a fine way to acquire this capital, I decided. It might even be fun. And the jump from a delivery bike to the silver screen isn’t at all fantastic in a place like Hollywood.

My mother had some advice to offer. She had always relied on a line from the Lord’s Prayer, “Thy will be done.” With her, it was not a term of martyred resignation. On the contrary, it was a joyous note of confidence in a Divine harmonious plan which included all men.

If I listened for His voice, followed His guidance and wisdom instead of my own, she advised, He would lead me to my proper place. And what could I want, she asked, more than my proper place?

My father had given me 12 months in which to prove myself in pictures. Should I fail, I was to “go out and get a job.” For 11 months I failed miserably, averaging 3 days a month as an extra at $7.50 a day.

One morning I awoke with a great sense of harmony, of peace, of my right relationship to the world and everyone in it. Even the rain outside, which would make moist hunting of my daily studio rounds, seemed a blessing. I could wear my new trench coat, a prized possession.

I was standing outside the door of the RKO casting office when a producer went by. A mighty man with parts to give, he looked me over carefully. My heart rose. He passed into his office without a word. My heart sank. But in a minute he was back, “You,” he called. “Come in here.”

I stood in his office, a little damp, but feeling again that sense of rightness. “This,” thought I, “is it.”

“What do you do around here?” he asked.

“I’m an actor,” I said, stretching the truth a bit.

“Where did you get that trench coat?”

I couldn’t believe my ears. “Place up in Hollywood,” I faltered.

“How much?”

“Eighteen dollars.”

“I like it,” he said. “Could you get me one?” I watched him peel off a twenty and then I was out in the rain again, trudging three miles because I didn’t want to waste carfare. And he didn’t even tip me.

Next morning our phone rang. It was the producer. “Are you the trench coat fellow?” he demanded. “I’ve been thinking about you,” he said. “Didn’t you say you were an actor? We just bought a story, and the guy in it…Well, you are the guy. Built the same. Look the same. You better come back here.”

There it was. The open door. Luck? Maybe. Maybe once…or twice. But when you find you can apply a certain principle to every phase of life, at any given moment, It can’t be just luck. Through the years I have followed the principle of “asking my way of Him,” and then confidently taking the next step which seems right.

Several years ago, for example, a major studio had a call on me for one picture a year. That is a commitment and, in the last analysis, I could be forced to do that picture whether I liked the part or not.

One day I was mailed a script which had me playing the lead opposite one of our foremost glamour girls. My agent was delighted. “She’s never made a picture that’s lost money. She’s great box office.”

But I didn’t like the story, nor my part. It was a distasteful, degrading one, I thought. Nor did I personally care for the torrid story any more than I could see myself as the lover.

Starting with the producer, I carefully explained why I did not want to make the picture. He referred me to the executive producer, who passed me on to the executive, executive producer. Each time I repeated my explanation until my own monologue was beginning to bore me. And all it got me was a date to explain my feelings to the big boss.

I valued my reputation for cooperation. Never had I been forced to be “difficult,” to refuse a part. I didn’t want to now. And a contract is a contract. Nevertheless, I felt strongly I shouldn’t do this picture. It was, you might say, a dilemma. And as I faced the chief executive, a man reputed to be ruthless and deaf to any pleas, I knew that beyond this office I had no further recourse.

He looked at me with cold eyes and said abruptly, “I don’t want a long story. I want just one good reason wily you don’t want to play this part.”

In a moment of silence, I reached mentally for help. Then I said slowly, “I would be embarrassed to have my sons see me in this picture.”

For a second he just stared. Then he stood up, clapped me on the shoulder and said, “I see you have given this honest thought… Maybe you’d like to do a Western we’re working on?”

Was that a “lucky” line? I don’t think so. Was I clever? I know I wasn’t. It was truth speaking in me, recognized by the producer, and harmony between us was the inevitable result.

I don’t claim I haven’t made mistakes. I have. But most of my mistakes were due to trusting “luck,” or my own judgment instead of His.

 

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