Funny things happen in church sometimes. Sara Jo Bardsley, a pastor's wife in Huntington, New York, was telling the children of her first-grade Sunday School class the parable of the seeds. She explained that God said we can plant a seed. If the sun shines on the ground and it rains, or we water it, the seed will grow. However, everything we plant does not grow, because sometimes the seed blows over the fence and falls among weeds. If we do not take care of it, it dies.

Then she explained that people are often like this. God creates us to be good, and if we live good lives and love God and help others, we can grow into a beautiful person. But if we get lost or fail to follow God's teachings, we can be like the seeds that never grow.

Six-year-old Mark understood this very well. He announced loud enough for the whole church to hear: "My father! He's over the fence all right. He never comes to church, he doesn't read the Bible, and he never helps anybody."

I would like to have heard the conversation in Mark's car going home that morning. Some funny things happen in church.

Often they are inadvertent. Kolette Irving of Salem, Oregon spotted a "typo" in the church bulletin. It read like this: "The ushers will eat the latecomers." That is one church where you want to be on time.

Some funny things happen in church. Also, of course, some tragic things occur in church. We are not all what God intended us to be. Someone once compared his church to Noah's Ark. "If the flood on the outside were not so bad, you couldn't stand the smell on the inside."

That can happen in the church. We are, after all, only human.

In John's Gospel Jesus prays for the church. He prays that we will all be one. Considering the present fragmentation of the Christian community, Christ is probably still praying that prayer today.