The Joy of Holy Humor Truly Last final update

There’s a season for everything    

and a time for every matter under the heavens:     

a time for giving birth and a time for dying,    

a time for planting                                                                

and a time for uprooting what was planted,  

a time for killing and a time for healing,    

a time for tearing down and a time for building up,  

a time for crying and a time for laughing...

    

Ecclesiastes 3:1-4a

             A preacher's little boy inquired, "Daddy, I notice every Sunday morning when you first come out to preach, you sit up on the platform and bow your head. What are you doing?" 
             The father explained, "I'm asking the Lord to give me a good sermon." 
             The little boy said, "Why don't he?" 

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"This isn’t the time or the place for that!"  I’ve heard this phrase wielded countless times about what is and is not appropriate for worship. We all agree, it seems, that there is a time for dying to self, time for uprooting sin, a time for tearing down defenses, a time for crying, a time for mourning, a time for avoiding embraces, a time for tearing our hearts (not our clothes), a and a time for hating evil.

                Season of Lent is there to help us to focus on these things.  But unfortunately, we get stuck at times.  We take ourselves quite seriously to the point that we miss the reason for giving up so much.  There is a reason that we take up our cross; it’s because we were meant to be emptied so that God might fill us with something different – with joy.  God wants our lives to be filled with, well, life. We are to be as faithful to the delight that God wants to share with us as to the guilt of our sin.  Let's not neglect these other parts of the scripture…for there are also times for giving birth, planting, building up, for repairing, for healing, for embracing, for dancing, for laughing, and for loving.
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The Reverend Billy Graham tells of a time early in his ministry when he arrived in a small town to preach a sermon. Wanting to mail a letter, he asked a young boy where the post office was. 

When the boy had told him, Dr. Graham thanked him and said, "If you'll come to the Church this evening, you can hear me telling everyone how to get to Heaven." "I don't think I'll be there," the boy said. "You don't even know your way to the post office."

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One day God was looking down to earth and saw all of the evil that was going on and decided to send an angel down to earth to check it out.  so God sent an angel to earth for a time. When the angel returned it told God, "yes it is bad on earth, 95% is bad and 5% is good."

Well, God thought for a moment and said “maybe I had better send down a second angel just in case.” So God sent a second angel to earth for a time. This angel returned to God and said “yes the earth was in decline, 95% was bad and 5% was good.”

http://www.buildingchurchleaders.com/multimedia/cartoons/

God said this was not good and decided to send a letter to the 5% that were good and encourage them, something to help them keep going. Do you know what that letter said?






Oh, you didn't get one either?!

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There once was an Illinois man who left the snow-filled streets of Chicago for a vacation in Florida. His wife was on a business trip and was planning to meet him there the next day. 

When he reached his hotel, he decided to send his wife a quick e-mail. Unable to find the scrap of paper on which he had written her e-mail address, he did his best to type it in from memory. 

Unfortunately, he missed one letter, and his note was directed instead to an elderly preacher's wife, whose husband had passed away only the day before. When the grieving widow checked her e-mail, she took one look at the monitor, let out a piercing scream, and fainted to the floor.

At the sound, her family rushed into the room and saw this note on the screen: 

"Dearest Wife, 
          Just got checked in. Everything prepared for your arrival tomorrow. 

Signed, 
Your eternally loving husband. 

P.S. Sure is hot down here."

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Edited from H.A. Williams' book Tensions:
No wonder the Pharisees, who seem to have been always wholly serious, had to have Jesus put down. He made their piety look ridiculous.

Who in reality had ever witnessed a pious man blowing a trumpet before he put a dollar in the offering plate? And then there were camels going through the eyes of needles, not to mention camels being swallowed easily by those who choked when they swallowed a gnat.

And worse: idlers who were given full pay, stewards who were successful cheats, wicked sons being distinguished on their return home - what had all this nonsense have to do with religion?

…but Eternity had the last laugh after all. Here are Caiaphas, Pilate, Herod and all theirs, have done their duty getting rid of a dangerous fool. He is safely dead. Now they can concentrate on the serious matters to which their lives are dedicated.

But behind their backs,  the fool has popped up again like a Jack-in-the-box and is dancing about even more vigorously than before. People here, there and everywhere are falling under his spell…

If that isn't funny, nothing is. The resurrection is the supreme, the

final, the ultimate joke. And since laughter is highly contagious, perhaps even the hardest heart will in time catch the disease, turn around, see the joke, and then laugh with the rest of creation because the kingdom of God has drawn near."
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          There was a Christian lady who lived next door to an atheist. Every day, when the lady prayed, the atheist guy could hear her. He thought to himself, "She sure is crazy, praying all the time like that. Doesn't she know there isn't a God?"

          Many times while she was praying, he would go to her house and harass her, saying "Lady, why do you pray all the time? Don't you know there is no God?" But she kept on praying.

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          One day, she ran out of groceries. As usual, she was praying to the Lord explaining her situation and thanking Him for what He was gonna do. As usual, the atheist heard her praying and thought to himself, "Humph! I'll fix her."
          He went to the grocery store, bought a whole bunch of groceries, took them to her house, dropped them off on the front porch, rang the door bell and then hid in the bushes to see what she would do. When she opened the door and saw the groceries, she began to praise the Lord with all her heart, jumping, singing and shouting everywhere! The atheist then jumped out of the bushes and told her, "You ol' crazy lady, God didn't buy you those groceries, I bought those groceries!" At hearing this, she broke out and started running down the street, shouting and praising the Lord.
          When he finally caught her, he asked what her problem was. She said, "I knew the Lord would provide me with some groceries, but I didn't know he was gonna make the devil pay for them!" 

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The child and his mother:

              A curious child asked his mother: “Mommy, why are some of your hairs turning grey?”

             The mother tried to use this occasion to teach her child: “It is because of you, dear. Every bad action of yours will turn one of my hairs grey!”

             The child replied innocently: “Now I know why grandmother has only grey hairs on her head.”

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There was a terrible blizzard and it was snowing and snowing all weekend. Sunday morning came and the Pastor saw that the snow had reached his window. He didn't think anyone would be coming to church this morning, but he felt obliged to go anyway. The pastor fought his way through the icy wind and snow to get next door to the church. He waited in the sanctuary, reading, for ten minutes. He was about to go when the door opened, and a man staggered through. 

" Hello!" said the pastor. "Church will have to be cancelled today. You're the only one who has come."

The man replied, "Reverend, if you had a big herd of sheep, and only one came home that night to feed, would you still feed him?" 

The pastor was amazed and cried, "Yes! I would!" He then was filled with the spirit, and decided to preach the best sermon ever. He talked and talked about all of life's trials and joys. He referred to passages from Genesis to Job, Psalms to John, Acts to Revelation. He did so with profound excitement and conviction. This went on for a long time. 

After the minister had come to his final conclusion, he went down and talked to the other man. " Did that satisfy you, sir?" he asked happily. 

The man replied, "Reverend, if you had a herd of sheep and only one came home that night to feed, would you make sure he ate the whole bale of hay!?"
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A young woman teacher with obvious liberal tendencies explains to her class of small children that she is an atheist. She asks her class if they are atheists too. Not really knowing what atheism is, but wanting to be like their teacher, their hands explode into the air like fleshy fireworks. There is, however, one exception. A girl named Lucy has not gone along with the crowd. The teacher asks her why she has decided to be different. 

"Because I'm not an atheist." 

"Then," asks the teacher, "What are you?"

"I'm a Christian."

The teacher is a little perturbed now, her face slightly red. She asks Lucy why she is a Christian. 

"Well, I was brought up knowing and loving Jesus. My mom is a Christian, and my dad is a Christian, so I am a Christian."

The teacher is now angry. "That's no reason," she says loudly. "What if your mom was a moron, and you dad was a moron. What would you be then?"


A pause, and a smile. "Then," says Lucy, "I'd be an atheist!"

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  One day a group of scientists got together and decided that man had come a long way and no longer needed God. They picked one scientist to go and tell Him that they were done with Him. 

The scientist walked up to God and said, "God, we've decided that we no longer need you. We're to the point that we can clone people and do many miraculous things, so why don't you just go on and get lost."

God listened patiently and kindly to the man and, after the scientist was done talking, God said, "Very well! How about this? Let's have a man-making contest."

To which the man replied, "OK, great!"

But God added, "Now we're going to do this just like I did back in the old days with Adam."

The scientist said, "Sure, no problem" and bent down and grabbed himself a handful of dirt.

God just looked at him and said, "No, no, no. You go get your own dirt!"  

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An elderly pastor was searching his closet for his collar before church one Sunday morning. In the back of the closet, he found a small box containing 3 eggs and 250 $1 bills. 

He called his wife into the closet to ask her about the box and its contents. Embarrassed, she admitted having hidden the box there for their entire 30 years of marriage. Disappointed and hurt, the pastor asked her, "WHY?" 

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The wife replied that she hadn't wanted to hurt his feelings. He asked her how the box could have hurt his feelings. She said that every time during their marriage that he had delivered a poor sermon, she had placed an egg in the box. 

The pastor felt that 3 poor sermons in 30 years was certainly nothing to feel bad about, so he asked her what the $250 was for. 

She replied, "Each time I got a dozen eggs, I sold them to the neighbors for $1." 

          

Filling in the "Gaps"

          When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby, he said to his mother, “Woman, here is your son.”

John 19:26

Here is something I shared yesterday at the Community Good Friday service at Holy Cross Catholic Church here in Pickens:

We live in a busy world.  How many of us constantly scramble trying to keep pace with the unrealistic demands we place on ourselves? Everyday stuff becomes urgent and consumes us to the point that there is no room for anything, or anyone, else.

Why are we then surprised when difficulties and struggles come that we find our lives going from busy to frantic? We fill in every gap with activity as we try to patch the pain and ease the hurt we experience.

Someone I visited this week shared with me, “I had my plans of what I hoped to do [before getting sick], but now there’s just a great big gap.”

“It’s true,” I nodded, “and you know what I have learned about those gaps? It’s in those unplanned times in my life that God draws near, speaks to me and uses me the most.”

As Jesus suffered on the cross, he was struggling for breath and feeling the tear of the nails in his hands and feet. His back scraped open wounds across a coarse wooden beam. If anyone had a right to be focused on their own pain and suffering, it was Jesus. Who would blame him? 

Instead, Christ models the love of others he taught his disciples.  He sees Mary’s hurt and pain through the drops of blood that traced his face.  He shows an ultimate concern for her even as he draws nearer to death. “Woman, behold your son.” These words breathed by our Savior show that he never lost sight of others in his darkest hours. He knew that Mary needed the comforting assurance that she would not be alone even after Jesus was gone.

“Love one another as I have loved you,” says Jesus. May we take pause – especially when our days are busy and difficult -- so that we might embrace the ‘gaps’ of life.  Even when things are not going as we planned, may we take every opportunity to show love to others as Christ has loved us.

Grace and Peace,

Sometimes Life is Tough

 This is the word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord...  The army of the king of Babylon was then besieging Jerusalem, and Jeremiah the prophet was confined in the courtyard of the guard in the royal palace of Judah. Jeremiah said, “The word of the Lord came to me:  Hanamel son of Shallum your uncle is going to come to you and say, ‘Buy my field at Anathoth, because as nearest relative it is your right and duty to buy it.’            “Then, just as the Lord had said, my cousin Hanamel came to me in the courtyard of the guard and said, ‘Buy my field at Anathoth in the territory of Benjamin. Since it is your right to redeem it and possess it, buy it for yourself.’           “I knew that this was the word of the Lord;  so I bought the field at Anathoth from my cousin Hanamel and weighed out for him seventeen shekels of silver. I signed and sealed the deed, had it witnessed, and weighed out the silver on the scales.  I took the deed of purchase—the sealed copy containing the terms and conditions, as well as the unsealed copy— and I gave this deed to Baruch son of Neriah, the son of Mahseiah, in the presence of my cousin Hanamel and of the witnesses who had signed the deed and of all the Jews sitting in the courtyard of the guard. “In their presence I gave Baruch these instructions: ‘This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says: Take these documents, both the sealed and unsealed copies of the deed of purchase, and put them in a clay jar so they will last a long time.  For this is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says: Houses, fields and vineyards will again be bought in this land.’   --Jeremiah 32:1-2, 6-15

Ever get tired of constant obstacles?  We wait in line at the DMV, are put on hold 20 minutes by customer service, and then sit three times through a red light. We have a tough time remaining relaxed until our turn finally comes around. It would be bad enough on its own, but the extra time reminds us of the 2 dozen other things that really could have been done earlier, or of the major crisis at home that we still haven’t figured out.
Well, there’s nothing that can be done about DMVs or customer service lines but wouldn’t it be nice to rid ourselves of at least one nuisance by the touch of a button? Imagine. You’re in the middle of an awful day and running late for an appointment. The light in front of you turns from yellow to red. Instead of having to sit around praying for the light to hurry and change, you simply punch a little button and give yourself permission to go. 
           Unfortunately, such traffic light switchers are a bad idea. Interfering with traffic in an intersection is illegal in most states, and the random switching of signals is bound to create significant safety problems. Oh, well...
Israelites found themselves in the place where things were definitely not going their way. The army of the king of Babylon has surrounded the city of Jerusalem, and the people within the walls are desperate for relief. Some want God to remove the Babylonian army, some want to take up arms and fight, while still others want to find a way to escape. The army of Babylon is a huge, glaring red light — and it doesn’t look like it is ever going to change.
Finally, the word of the Lord comes to the prophet Jeremiah, but it doesn’t tell him how to build a traffic light switcher. Instead, God orders Jeremiah to buy a field in Anathoth, the town of his birth, outside the city of Jerusalem. The Lord promises Jeremiah that the light is going to change, but not for a long, long time. God wants the prophet to wait patiently for the green light, wait through the conquest of Jerusalem and the devastation of Anathoth, wait until that time when the exile in Babylon is over and people will be able to return and repopulate the land. “For this is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says: ,” reports Jeremiah: “Houses, fields and vineyards will again be bought in this land.’” (32:15).
How bizarre: to buy a piece of land in a town that is about to be destroyed by an invading army. About like buying oceanfront property as a hurricane is ready to hit.The traffic light may be red, but God tells Jeremiah that he doesn't have to feel stuck — he can use that time of captivity to take an action that shows his complete faith in God. 
So Jeremiah buys the field at Anathoth, and carefully weighs out the money — 17 shekels of silver. He signs the deed, seals it, gets the proper witnesses, and then orders that the papers be put in an earthenware jar, in order that they may last for a long, long time (vv. 9-14). Jeremiah is prepared to wait as long as it takes. He trusts that God is going to create a better future for the people of Israel, but it’s not going to happen as quickly as the people would like.
I know that people would love to hear me talk about a formula of prayer or a few verses of scripture that would erase and immediately change our lives when we find ourselves trapped and hurting.  I have some good news and bad news: The bad news? there is no such thing as a traffic light switcher in life. Sometimes we just have to live in and through the difficult times
How some farmers in Alabama felt. They were accustomed to planting one crop every year – cotton. They would plow as much ground as they could and plant their crop.  Year after year they lived by cotton.  Then one year, the dreaded boll weevil devastated whole area. The next year, farmers mortgaged homes, planted cotton, and hoped for a good harvest, but the boll weevil destroyed the whole crop as it began to grow. Only a few farms survived.
People of Israel had come to realize what we know all to well, in life, there is no magic button we can push that makes all the trouble and pain to go away. Jeremiah has shown them that they will have to endure this for the long haul.  
That's the bad news; where is the good news? We may not have a traffic light clicker for life, but we do have a God who gives us the strength, the patience, and the grace to out wait any obstacle.
         And what about those farmers? The few who survived decided to experiment the third year by planting something they’d never planted before—peanuts. Those peanuts were so hearty and the markets so strong that the third year profits paid off the debts of the previous two.  The farmers planted peanuts from then on and prospered greatly.
Because God is alive and God is with us, we always have hope, even in the face of the worst life brings.  And I don’t just mean this as a bunch of feel good platitudes. What is the worst that we can face and fear when God is with us?  Death?  God has conquered death through the resurrection of Jesus Christ…If we die, we are with Christ forever.  What is the worst that we have to fear and face? the pain and discomfort that is caused to us by ourselves and others, most often emotional, that leaves us hurt and wounded.  It is in those times that the Apostle Paul speaks to us when he says, “we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.”
God is always working to turn evil into good, and death into new life. Over the course of our lives, we will certainly experience pain and suffering, but punishment and defeat are never the last words in our story. “I will rejoice in doing good to them,” God promises, as he looks to the future, “and I will plant them in this land in faithfulness, with all my heart and all my soul” (v. 41).
         The parable is told of an old dog that fell into a farmer's well. After assessing the situation, the farmer sympathized with the dog but decided that neither the dog nor the well were worth the trouble of saving. Instead he planned to bury the old dog in the well and put him out of his misery.
         When the farmer began shoveling, initially the old dog was hysterical. But as the farmer continued shoveling and the dirt hit his back, a thought struck him. It dawned on him that every time a shovel load of dirt landed on his back he should shake it off and step up. but he did not know if he could…
        This he did blow after blow. "Shake it off and step up, shake it off and step up, shake it off and step up!" he repeated to encourage himself.
         No matter how painful the blows or how distressing the situation seemed, the old dog fought panic and just kept shaking it off and stepping up! It was not long before the dog, battered and exhausted, stepped triumphantly over the wall of that well. What seemed as though it would bury him actually benefited him—all because of the way he handled his adversity.
It is natural for us to want to control our destinies, which is why a high-tech traffic light switcher is bound to be so attractive to us. But as people of faith, we are challenged to allow God to shape our futures with us, and this requires waiting for God’s guidance with open hearts and receptive minds. “To wait open-endedly is an enormously radical attitude toward life,” said the Christian writer Henri J. M. Nouwen. “The spiritual life is a life in which we wait, actively present to the moment, trusting that new things will happen to us, new things that are far beyond our own imagination, fantasy or prediction. That, indeed, is a very radical stance toward life in a world preoccupied with control.”
The challenge before us is to find a way to live within life’s difficult moments. This means letting go of our craving for control. Instead, we can trust in what God is doing, move ahead with faith and persistence, and gain a clearer picture of the future that is being prepared for us.
      This road is not easy, but the Companion can carry us forever.

Grace and Peace,