Maxie Dunnam tells about a recent PEANUTS cartoon in which Lucy--that bossy, assertive, always-take-control character--is playing her role as psychiatrist. She sits in her booth with a banner on the top that says "Psychiatric Help--5 cents," and then down below a sign says, "The Doctor Is In." Charlie Brown is her patient. Lucy says to Charlie, "Your life is like a house . . ." In the next frame, she says reflectively, "You want your house to have a solid foundation, don't you?" Charlie Brown has a kind of ...
Where can I be safe? That is a question many people are asking. All of us want to know that our home is safe, our family is safe, that those we love are protected. Some unknown wit has suggested some signs that you can put around your home to keep it safe from burglars. Perhaps you will find these signs helpful: Sign #1. Dear Mr. Butcher, starting tomorrow, please leave eight pounds of meat for Brutus. Six pounds only makes him angry and vicious! Sign #2. Dear Mr. Mailman, Please be sure to keep all parts ...
There was a fascinating story in Time magazine sometime back about Melissa Deal Forth, 40, a film maker in Atlanta. It was about the day her husband Chris Deal died. It was exactly one year after he had been diagnosed with acute lymphocytic leukemia. The last months had been gruesome: treatments that could not save him, nights when she could not sleep. But Melissa was sleeping soundly at his hospital bedside on the morning of Jan. 4 when Chris managed, somehow, without being seen or heard, to maneuver ...
Last year, newspapers around the world carried the story of Eric Abbott, a British sailor who makes a habit of getting lost. On August 10, 2000, the British coast guard rescued Eric Abbott for the sixth time after he sailed off course and ran aground. You would think after all these mishaps, he would give up sailing. No way. Abbott plans on hitting the water again soon. Some would admire Abbott for saying that he won't give up sailing. The members of the British coast guard don't share that admiration. It ...
A group of friends went deer hunting. They separated into pairs. That night, one hunter returned alone, staggering under an eight-point buck. The other hunters asked, "Where's Harry?" The lone hunter replied, "Harry fainted a couple miles up the trail." The others couldn't believe it. "You mean you left him lying there and carried the deer back instead?" The man answered, "It was a tough call, but I figured no one was going to steal Harry." To this deer hunter it was simply a matter of priorities. And one ...
A young man asked an old rich man how he made his money. The old guy fingered his worsted wool vest and said, “Well, son, it was 1932. The depth of the Great Depression. I was down to my last nickel. I invested that nickel in an apple. I spent the entire day polishing the apple and, at the end of the day, I sold the apple for ten cents. “The next morning, I invested those ten cents in two apples. I spent the entire day polishing them and sold them at 5:00 p.m. for 20 cents. I continued this system for a ...
A patient, while recovering in the hospital from a heart attack, met this over zealous evangelist. For half an hour, the preacher lectured the man on being thankful for God's mercy and repenting immediately of his sins. "Tell the truth, brother," the pastor remarked. "During your heart attack, didn't all your sins flash before your eyes?" With a mischievous grin, the patient responded, "Don't be ridiculous, the attack only lasted six hours!" (1) None of us likes to hear the word "repent," do we? At best, ...
Gloria Swanson was one of Hollywood's top actresses from the 1920s to the 1950s. She was quite ambitious. Early in her career, Swanson was quoted as saying, "I have gone through enough of being a nobody. I have decided that when I am a star, I will be every inch and every moment the star! Everybody from the studio gate man to the highest executive will know it." And Swanson made sure of that. Before returning from a trip to France, Gloria Swanson sent a telegram to her film studio informing them that she ...
Bernard Kerik is a former New York City police commissioner. Kerik always kept a low profile in his job. He was not a man who sought publicity. And then came the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Suddenly, Kerik's face was all over the national and international news. He organized and led the highly-praised police response following the attacks. In his autobiography, Bernard Kerik talks about the rocky road that led him into police work. He dropped out of high school, then entered his chosen ...
Some of you are familiar with the off-beat humor of Jack Handey. I have a list of "Deep Thoughts" allegedly written by young people, ages four to fifteen, who were asked to write their thoughts in Jack Handey's style. Some of them are hilarious in a bizarre kind of way. Here's one by a youngster aged 10: My young brother asked me what happens after we die. I told him we get buried under a bunch of dirt and worms eat our bodies. I guess I should have told him the truth--that most of us go to Hell and burn ...
Greater love has no man than this . . . The Civil War ended in 1865. But it wasn't until 1997 that the last shot of that war was fired. In 1997, two young boys were playing around with their new Christmas present, a metal detector. Using their new toy, they came across a live shell that dates back to the Civil War. The boys, Michael and Andrew Zimmerman of Winchester, Virginia, didn't know what the shell was at first. Neither did their uncle, Michael Robinson. He reports poking and banging on it as he ...
Have you ever gotten so angry with your boss that you wanted to walk out the door? Not just walk out the door, but to exact a little revenge in the process? Advice columnist Jeffrey Zaslow once asked his readers that question. Here is what he got: Several waitresses and secretaries said their most satisfying career moves were out the door. Gina, a Woolworth's waitress, told how her boss once offered a ten-cent raise, "as a big favor." Gina saw it as a big insult, and her customers egged her on to quit. It ...
It's a good thing that today's text did not fall earlier in September--say Labor Day weekend. The moral of the story goes against most of the things you and I believe about the relationship between capital and labor. You know the story well. A landowner went out about six in the morning to hire men to work in his vineyard. He agreed to pay them $20 for the day. That should tell you right off that the workers were not unionized--though some of you can remember when $20 was good pay for a day's work. About ...
Is there anyone in this room who doesn't enjoy looking good? We all do--whether we admit it or not. And when we feel like we don't look good, it affects how we feel about ourselves. There was a study done by researchers at Yale University sometime back on what are often called "bad hair days." This study found that on those days when our hair just won't cooperate, we feel less smart, less capable, more embarrassed and less sociable. What was surprising to the researchers was that men, not women, were most ...
Tony Campolo may be the closest thing we have to a prophet in the church today. Many of you are familiar with him. Tony is a well-known Baptist preacher. And he is a professor of Sociology at Eastern College in St. David's, Pa. Like the prophets of the Old Testament, Tony takes unpopular stands. Anyone else taking the same stands would get run out of the country. But Tony is so fundamentally sound in his theology and such an entertaining speaker, we have to pay attention to what he says! For example, Tony ...
An Upbeat Word for a Downbeat World, #9 The choir director selected the 6-year-old boy with the sweetest face in the production for the opening scene of the play. "Now, all you have to do is, when I direct the choir to sing "?And the angel lit the candle,' you come onstage and light all the candles." "I can do it! I can do it!" the little boy said, excited to be the one picked. Rehearsals came and went, and finally the big night arrived. The choir was in grand voice, the stage was beautifully decorated ...
Two men are leaning against the office water cooler. One says to the other, "Say, you look depressed. What are you thinking about?" "My future," his friend sighed. "What makes your future look so hopeless?" the first man asked. "My past," he replied. (1) Don't you wish you could be a fly on the wall for the rest of that conversation! I'd like to know what regrets from that man's past were stealing away his hope for the future. A few months back, there was a particularly sad letter in the Billy Graham ...
Every student, at some point in time, has to learn about the Thirty Years' War, a battle that consumed much of central Europe from 1618 to 1648. The war ended with the Peace of Westphalia treaty, which was signed in 1648. However, at the time, no representatives from the republic of San Marino, which is in Italy, attended the treaty conference. So officially, until just a few years ago, the republic of San Marino has been at war with Sweden, its most bitter enemy at the time. Finally, in 1996, as a ...
One of these days, at the end of a message, I am going to give you a pop quiz--just to see how many of you were really listening. That would be cruel, wouldn't it? Don't worry. I'm afraid of the results myself. Few people enjoy taking pop quizzes--or any kind of test for that matter. Some of our young people would give an "Amen" to that. Tests elevate our anxiety level, so people will do some crazy things to prepare themselves for tests. For the benefit of our high school and college students, I want to ...
Object: None In today's scripture Jesus is teaching people out on a hill. Many people were there. Jesus asked Philip where they could get enough food for all of them. Now Jesus knew what he was going to do but he wondered what Philip would say. Philip said it would take a fortune to buy enough for all of the people. Another disciple, Andrew, found a boy with a basket that contained five loaves and two fishes but he knew that wouldn't begin to feed everyone. Jesus told everyone to sit down. He took the boy' ...
Some people have weird eating habits. But none weirder than Michel Lotito. Lotito ate everything. I mean EVERYTHING. In Amarillo, Texas, he ate a queen-sized bed. In Quebec he ate a whole bicycle. "The chain," he was quoted as saying, "was the tastiest part." In Marseilles he ate a car. A small car, true--a Renault, I think--but still a car. As James Dent once noted in his humorous book, James Dent Strikes Again, Lotito was not an overgrown termite. He was a human-type person born 1950 in Grenoble, France ...
A man working at a school for the deaf was walking by a computer lab. He saw a deaf student sitting alone and signing vigorously into thin air. He could see her moving her hands and arms with great force, but there seemed to be no one with whom she was communicating. It turns out that she was cursing her computer. (1) Some of you who work with computers can relate to that. I want to focus for a few moments today on people who have what we sometimes call, handicapping conditions--those who cannot see, ...
The following notice appeared sometime back in a newspaper in the northeastern part of the U. S.: "To those of you who bought our book, Skydiving Made Easy, please enter the following correction on page 12, paragraph 3, line 2: The words 'State zip code' should say "Pull rip cord.' We regret any inconvenience this mistake may have caused you." (1) I suspect it might have caused some inconvenience. A husband who was not used to doing housework decided to wash his dirty sweatshirt. After stepping into the ...
Many of us dream of visiting exotic places. Maybe we'd like to see the magnificent castles in Europe, or the unparalleled beauty of Hawaii. Or perhaps the mysterious orient, with its unique culture. When we're there, we might even start dreaming about what it would be like to live there permanently. Would it be as beautiful or as impressive if I saw it every day, or would I begin to take it for granted, just as I do my present surroundings? A scribe came to Jesus and asked him a question: "Which ...
Dear Santa, wrote one young fellow, Please give me a tank, a jet fighter, 20 green soldiers, and a bazooka gun. I'm planning a surprise attack on my brother. So don't tell anyone. Thanks, Danny Dear Santa, wrote another, How will you get into our house this year? We don't have a chimney and my father just installed a very expensive security system. Julie Dear Santa, How old are you? How did you meet Mrs. Claus? Is your first name really Santa? Can I be an elf next year? Who is your favorite kid? How do you ...