Keep 'em coming.....

My emailers never cease to amuse me:


An Irishman goes into the confessional box after years of being away from the Church.


There's a fully equipped bar with Guinness on tap. On the other wall is a dazzling array of the finest cigars and chocolates.

Then the priest comes in. "Father, forgive me, for its been a very long time since I've been to confession, but I must first admit that the confessional box is much more inviting than it used to be."


The priest replies: "Get out of there. You're on my side."

High Theology

From one of my magazines:

"After a hard West Virginia rainstorm filled all the potholes in the streets and alleys, a young mother watched her two little boys playing in a puddle from her kitchen window. The older of the two, a five-year old lad, grabbed his sibling by the back of the head and shoved his face into the water hole.

As the boy recovered and stood laughing and dripping, the mother ran to the boys in a panic. 'Why on earth did you do that to your little brother?' she asked.

'We were just playing 'church' Mommy,' he said. ' I was baptizing him in the name of the Father, the Son, and in the hole-he-goes.' "

Shut Up !

As I flipped through the pages of a six week devotional journal, I stopped at the Bold -faced SHUT UP !!! I immeidately thought, "No, that can't be right, this is a devotional journal, it couldn't say that as a title." But, there it sat, defiantly stating its obvious message, SHUT UP !!

Now, excerpts from the article:

"It sounds so harsh. When my girls were growing up, we did not allow them to say it. Shut ip! It is so abrasive, so blunt!"

"That is the way the Law oof God. To anyone who tries to offer excuses, to all who try to rationalize their sin before a holy God, the Law is abrupt. It's harsh, abrasive and blunt. "Shut up!" it demands."

"Because God has given his Law, every sinner's mouth must remain silent. Shut up! Those who stand trial before God may offer no excuses. We can make no deal. every argument is overruled before we even offer it.the Law shouts "Shut up!"

"So often we try to live as though it were the other way around, as if God owed us an explanation. When life seems to treat us unfairly, we scream out our "Whys?" God's Old Testament servent Job suffered much in life. As he did, he trotted out all kinds of questions, 'why' questions,' many of them like our own.In the end, though, he concluded, "I am unworthy--how can I reply to you? I put my hand over my mouth". (Job 40:4) In other words, Job said, "I will shut up!"

The article went on to talk about how Jesus stood silent before Pilate because there was really nothing to say, "No deals to be cut." I smiled after I read the article, because I could think of more than a number of people who would like me to "Shut up" (playfully, and not so playfully!).

I had been mulling over lately as to when I should interject, and when I should stay out of 'church business'. I have found it very ironic over the years how many times I have been thanked for working with our youth, and setting up activities for other age groups, but yet when I try talk to the 'institution' about changing cetain structural changes, I have almost literally been told to SHUT UP !!

So, what do you do?