Hot Topic

At a training session in the fire station, the team was assembled around the kitchen table.

The training officer was discussing the behavior of fire: “You pull up to a house and notice puffs of smoke coming from the eaves, blackened out windows and little or no visible flame. What does this tell you?” he asked.

Expecting to hear that the house is in a possible back draft situation, a condition very dangerous to fire fighters, he instead heard from one quick wit, “You got the right place.”

Synchronized Swimming

The pastor had been disturbed by a person who was a fast reader.

“We shall now read the Twenty-third Psalm in unison,” he announced.

“Will the lady who is always by ‘the still waters’ while the rest of us are in ‘green pastures,’ please pause until we catch up?”

Wall To Wall

Two bats are going for their midnight feed. After an hour or so, one bat gets tired of looking and goes home with no blood.

The other bat comes home with blood dripping from its mouth. The first bat says enviously, “Where did you get all that blood from?”

The second bat replies, “Follow me. I’ll show you.”

After awhile the second bat leads them to a cave. He says, “You see that wall over there?”

The hungry bat excitedly says, “Yes!”

Other bat says, “I didn’t.”

Life Saver

A married couple enjoyed their fishing boat, but it was always the husband who was behind the wheel. He was concerned about what might happen in an emergency.

So one day out on the lake he said to his wife, “Honey, take the wheel… Pretend that I am having a heart attack. You must get the boat safely to shore and dock it.”

So she drove the boat to shore and docked it. Later that evening, the wife walked into the living room. She sat down next to her husband, picked up the newspaper, and said,

“Honey, go into the kitchen. Pretend I’m having a heart attack – cook dinner and wash the dishes.”

Truth or Consequences

The Preacher awoke one Sunday morning and saw it was a beautiful day, and thought to himself, I don’t want to go to church today. he called his associate and said, “I’m sick, would you preach for me today?” His associate assured him he would.

St. Peter looked at God and said, “Are you going to let him get by with that?”

God said, “No I’m not.”

The preacher put his golf clubs in the trunk of car and drove fifty miles away to a golf course where no one knew him. Once again St. Peter said, “God are you going to let him get by with that?”

God said, “No I’m not.”

The preacher teed up the ball and hit it. It flew like it had never flown before, about 350 yards, bounced about three times and went into the hole for a hole in one.

St. Peter looked at God and said, “God are you going to let him get away with that?” God smiled and said, “Who is he going to tell?”

Mommy Dearest

“I had the strangest dream last night,” a man was telling his psychiatrist.

“I saw my mother, but when she turned around to look at me, I noticed that she had your face. You can imagine, I found this very disturbing, and in fact I woke up immediately, and couldn’t get back to sleep. I just lay there in bed waiting for morning to come, and then I got up, drank a Coke, and came right over here for my appointment. I thought you could help me explain the meaning of this strange dream.”

The psychiatrist was silent for a full minute before responding:

“A Coke? You call that a breakfast?”

Q: Why did the Pope cross the road?

A: He crosses everything.


Q: What’s gray, has four legs and a trunk?

A: A mouse on vacation.

Q: What has one horn and gives milk?

A: A milk truck.

Q: What goes “ooo, oooo, oooo?”

A: A cow with no lips.


Q: Why was the little ink drop crying?

A: Because his father was in the pen and he didn’t know how long the sentence was gonna be!


Q: What game do cats play at night?

A: Trivial purr-suit.

Shut Up, Trouble and Manners

There once were these three guys: Shut Up, Trouble and Manners.

Trouble got lost so Shut Up and Manners went to the police station. Manners stayed in the car while Shut Up went in. He told the police officer what happened and he asked, “What’s your name?”

“Shut Up.”

“Where are your Manners?”

“Waiting in the car.”

“Are you looking for Trouble?”

“Yes! How did you know?”

Random Thoughts

I’m on two diets. I wasn’t getting enough food on one.

One way to find out if you’re old is to fall in front of a group of people. If they laugh, you’re young. If they panic and start running toward you, you’re old

A dog gave birth to puppies near the road and was cited for littering.

A cold seat in a public restroom is unpleasant. A warm seat in a public restroom is worse.

An Answered Prayer in a Pandemic

Quincy Ruffin is a man of God. A minister at his church in Newark, New Jersey, he can preach a fine sermon, but he has another job where he practices his faith. Earlier this year, in the midst of the Covid-19 crisis, he was on the front lines.

Not only is he a preacher but Quincy is a crematory tech and funeral assistant in northern New Jersey. At any time of year, he’s a busy man, but this past spring, he found himself working 12- and 14-hour days.

The pandemic hit hard in March and April, and the cases increased day by day. As he sat at his desk and did the initial paperwork, “I noticed how the ages of the deceased kept falling,” he says. “From their eighties to their seventies down into their fifties and sometimes even thirties.”

Like his colleagues, he was following all the safety protocols issued by the CDC. “We wore hazmat, gloves, face shields, masks, goggles.” Sometimes the proper protective equipment was hard to find, “or the prices went skyrocket.”

The bodies started stacking up and what was especially hard was seeing how often they were people he knew. Pastors, pastors’ wives. All the while he held on to his faith. “I prayed and I sang. There’s that Bible verse, ‘building up yourself on your most holy faith,’ and I’d cling to that, holding on as best I could.”

His faith came to be tried even more when his own mother landed in the hospital with Covid-19. He became her advocate, making himself known to everyone who was caring for her, from the head nurse to the attending physician. 

The stress of his work while his own mother was suffering wore on him. “I felt like my legs were being sawed out from under me,” he says. “Yes, we pray and trust God, but I had to also face the reality my mom was in the hospital dealing with something most people I’d seen not come out of.”

She was released from the hospital and came home where his sisters looked after her, but her symptoms seemed to only get worse. “Each time I would see one of my sister’s names pop up on my phone it would be like a hammer going on inside my head.”  

They called the bishop and he prayed with all of them on the phone, FaceTiming with Quincy’s mom. Then an ambulance came and took her back to the hospital. Quincy couldn’t see her and couldn’t get her to answer on FaceTime. All he could do was pray. 

“Aside from dealing with my mom’s declining health, I was working double shifts almost every single day to accommodate the rising number of cases coming in due to the virus,” he says.

When he was finally able to FaceTime with his mom in the hospital, she was so weak and on oxygen that when he got off, the tears just flowed. “Please Lord, not now,” he prayed. “You’re God and You’re sovereign, but please don’t do this now.” With that came a measure of peace.

His mother was in the hospital for a couple more days, a burst of unexpected energy coming to her, until she FaceTimed him and declared, “I’m ready to go…today.”

“She returned home an hour later,” Quincy says, “and from that day I watched God complete the work in her body, and she’s now back at work, doing well, and she’s Covid-free!” His prayers and the prayers of many were answered. “I can never repay Him for all He’s done but I’ll spend the rest of my life trying.”

 

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