Chicken Soup

[nChrist]

Beautiful story! - Thanks - I enjoyed it.

[HisDaughter]

New Version of "Footprints"  

 Imagine you and the Lord are walking down the road together. For much of the way, the Lord's footprints go along steadily, consistently, rarely varying the pace.

But your footprints are a disorganized stream of zigzags, starts, stops, turnarounds, circles, departures, and returns.

For much of the way, it seems to go like this, but gradually your footprints come more in line with the Lord's, soon paralleling, His consistently.

You and HE are walking as true friends!

This seems perfect, but then an interesting thing happens: Your footprints that once etched the sand next to HIS are now walking precisely in His steps.

Inside His larger footprints are your smaller ones, you and HE are becoming one.

This goes on for many miles, but gradually you notice another change. The footprints inside the large footprints seem to grow larger.

Eventually they disappear altogether. There is only one set of footprints. They have become one.

This goes on for a long time, but suddenly the second set of footprints is back. This time it seems even worse! Zigzags all over the place. Stops. Starts. Gashes in the sand. A variable mess of prints.

You are amazed and shocked.

Your dream ends. Now you pray:

'Lord, I understand the first scene, with zigzags and fits. I was a new Christian;

I was just learning. But You walked on through the storm and helped me learn to walk with You.'

'That is correct.'

'And when the smaller footprints were inside of Yours, I was actually learning

to walk in Your steps, following You very closely.'

'Very good.. You have understood everything so far.'

When the smaller footprints grew and filled in Yours, I suppose that I was becoming like You in every way.'

'Precisely.'

'So, Lord, was there a regression or something? The footprints separated, and this time it was worse than at first.'

There is a pause as the Lord answers, with a smile in His voice.

'You didn't know? It was then that we danced!'

To everything there is a season, a time for every purpose under heaven: A time to weep, a time to laugh, a time to mourn, and a time to dance. ~ Ecclesiastes 3:1,4.

[nChrist]

'You didn't know? It was then that we danced!'

To everything there is a season, a time for every purpose under heaven: A time to weep, a time to laugh, a time to mourn, and a time to dance. ~ Ecclesiastes 3:1,4.

Yes, very nice!

[HisDaughter]

Bruce's Smile
By Matthew Crane

I learned a great deal about life when my father Bruce passed away. It all happened when I viewed my father's lifeless body.

My dad passed away after two days in a coma that was preceded by numerous years of suffering due to complications from diabetes and an almost non-existent sense of self worth. His life had been without a basic joy that might have sustained him. It's as if he had lost his emotional center and due to his choices had lost the center of his physical existence as well. If he was a believer in God, it wasn't very evident. At this point in his life his suffering was so great that he had to make a choice to let it go. He made that choice on the eighth of November.

My family, through a series of unconventional circumstances, was allowed to view my father's lifeless body while still in a body bag on a hospital gurney.

My grandfather was the first to look into the bag and speak to my dad followed by my brother, and then I got to look in. What I saw was the body of my father, his eyes and mouth still open and smiling, but what really shook me was the "life force" that was present. It was so strong that I had to sit down to process what I had just seen and felt.

With fortified courage, I looked again, this time directly into his eyes. I realized that his frozen facial expression at the moment of his death revealed that he had experienced the most beautiful and powerful episode of his life. His expression spoke to me of LOVE. It said, "I did it!" I could feel that by accomplishing death he had made his life whole once more.


Death is really the beginning of our "real life".

[nChrist]

Death is really the beginning of our "real life".

Amen! - This short life is like the blink of an eye compared to what will be. This post helped me to reflect on God's beautiful Promises to us.

[HisDaughter]

Five Lessons About the Way We Treat People

1. First Important Lesson - Cleaning Lady.
During my second month of college, our professor gave us a pop quiz. I was a conscientious student and had breezed through the questions until I read the last one:   "What is the first name of the woman who cleans the school?"

Surely this was some kind of joke. I had seen the cleaning woman several times. She was tall, dark-haired and in her 50's, but how would I know her name?

I handed in my paper, leaving the last question blank. Just before class ended, one student asked if the last question would count toward our quiz grade.   "Absolutely, " said the professor.. "In your careers, you will meet many people.  All are significant.. They deserve your attention and care, even if all you do is smile and say "hello.."

I've never forgotten that lesson.. I also learned her name was Dorothy

2.  Second Important Lesson - Pickup in the Rain

One night, at 11:30 p.m., an older African American woman was standing on the side of an Alabama highway trying to endure a lashing rain storm. Her car had broken down and she desperately needed a ride.  Soaking wet, she decided to flag down the next car.   A young white man stopped to help her, generally unheard of in those conflict-filled 1960's.

The man took her to safety, helped her get assistance and put her into a taxicab. She seemed to be in a big hurry, but wrote down his address and thanked him. Seven days went by and a knock came on the man's door. To his surprise, a giant console color TV was delivered to his home. A special note was attached.  It read:

"Thank you so much for assisting me on the highway the other night. The rain drenched not only my clothes, but also my spirits.  Then you came along.  Because of you, I was able to make it to my dying husband's' bedside just before he passed away... God bless you for helping me and unselfishly serving others."

Sincerely,

Mrs. Nat King Cole.

3 - Third Important Lesson - Always remember those who serve.

In the days when an ice cream sundae cost much less, a 10-year-old boy entered a hotel coffee shop and sat at a table. A waitress put a glass of water in front of him.

"How much is an ice cream sundae?" he asked.  "Fifty cents," replied the waitress.  The little boy pulled his hand out of his pocket and studied the coins in it. "Well, how much is a plain dish of ice cream?" he inquired.   By now more people were waiting for a table and the waitress was growing impatient.. "Thirty-five cents," she brusquely replied.  The little boy again counted his coins.  "I'll have the plain ice cream," he said.

The waitress brought the ice cream, put the bill on the table and walked away The boy finished the ice cream, paid the cashier and left..  When the waitress came back, she began to cry as she wiped down the table.  There, placed neatly beside the empty dish, were two nickels and five pennies..

You see,  he couldn't  have the sundae, because he had to have enough left to leave her a tip.

4 - Fourth Important Lesson. - The Obstacle in Our Path.

In ancient times, a King had a boulder placed on a roadway.  Then he hid himself and watched to see if anyone would remove the huge rock.  Some of the King's' wealthiest merchants and courtiers came by and simply walked around it..  Many loudly blamed the King for not keeping the roads clear, but none did anything about getting the stone out of the way.  Then a peasant came along carrying a load of vegetables.

Upon approaching the boulder, the peasant laid down his burden and tried to move the stone to the side of the road.  After much pushing and straining, he finally succeeded. After the  peasant picked up his load of vegetables, he noticed a purse lying in the road where the boulder had been. The purse contained many gold coins and a note from the King indicating that the gold was for the person who removed the boulder from the roadway.

The peasant learned what many of us never understand!

Every obstacle presents an opportunity to improve our condition.

5 - Fifth Important Lesson - Giving When it Counts...

Many years ago, when I worked as a volunteer at a hospital, I got to know a little girl named Liz who was suffering from a rare & serious disease.  Her only chance of recovery appeared to be a blood transfusion from her 5-year old brother, who had miraculously survived the same disease and had developed the antibodies needed to combat the illness.  The doctor explained the situation to her little brother, and asked the little boy if he would be willing to give his blood to his sister. I saw him hesitate for only a moment before taking a deep breath and saying, "Yes I'll do it if it will save her."

As the transfusion progressed, he lay in bed next to his sister and smiled, as we all did, seeing the color returning to her cheek. Then his face grew pale and his smile faded.

He looked up at the doctor and asked with a trembling voice, "Will I start to die right away".   Being young, the little boy had misunderstood the doctor; he thought he was going to have to give his sister all of his blood in order to save her.



Most importantly....

"Live with no regrets,

Treat people the way you want to be treated,

Work like you don't need the money,

Love like you've never been hurt, and

Dance like you do when nobody's watching."

[nChrist]

Nice stories! - Thanks!

[HisDaughter]

Jesus Was Never Too Busy
Abraham Piper

Sometimes I pretend I don't have time. All the tasks on my to-do list are incredibly important.

I'm too busy to answer that email. Too busy to help my neighbor--anyway, I don't even speak Spanish. And I can't give my wife a hand--too much to do. I've got a meeting. I've got to get the sermon posted. I'm blogging. Terribly important, indeed.

Then there's Jesus.

When his cousin and friend John the Baptist had just been beheaded, Jesus tried to go to a lonely place to mourn, but the crowds beat him there. He healed their sick and he served them all dinner. Only then, in the evening, did he get a chance to be alone. And even that was interrupted (Matthew 14:10-25).

Another time when he was alone praying, Peter sought him out to let him know everyone was looking for him (Mark 1:35-39). He did not respond at all irritably. Perhaps that seems like no big deal, but think about the meeting that Peter broke up when he interrupted Jesus. When God and his son are talking it is more important than any conference call or international summit we can imagine. Two beings whose job is to create and maintain universes are consulting with one another--and they don't mind little Peter breaking in with information he is convinced is important.

Even when his life was on the line, Jesus had time for other people's problems.

When someone threatens to kill you and you don't think it's quite time to die, escaping will jump to the top of your task list, won't it? It did for Jesus, but he still let himself be bothered by others' urgency:

The Pharisees went out and conspired against him, how to destroy him. Jesus, aware of this, withdrew from there. And many followed him, and he healed them all. (Matthew 12:14-15)

It would be like if your pastor was willing to stay up front after a service and pray for you, knowing there was someone in the building waiting around to shoot him.

Isn't Jesus wonderfully peculiar? Everything he does is infinitely more important than what I do, but every time I interrupt him, he pays attention. Nothing prevents him from loving us. During immense sadness at his own loss, he made sure others were happy. When he was in the most important meeting in the world, he listened to a nobody. And when he was fearing for his own life, he saved others' lives.

He always had time and he always will, and I don't feel very busy anymore.

[HisDaughter]

Erma Bombeck Quotes

A friend never defends a husband who gets his wife an electric skillet for her birthday.

A friend will tell you she saw your old boyfriend - and he's a priest.

All of us have moments in out lives that test our courage. Taking children into a house with a white carpet is one of them.

Being a child at home alone in the summer is a high-risk occupation. If you call your mother at work thirteen times an hour, she can hurt you.

Car designers are just going to have to come up with an automobile that outlasts the payments. 

Children make your life important.

Did you ever notice that the first piece of luggage on the carousel never belongs to anyone? 

Do you know what you call those who use towels and never wash them, eat meals and never do the dishes, sit in rooms they never clean, and are entertained till they drop? If you have just answered, "A house guest," you're wrong because I have just described my kids. 

Don't confuse fame with success. Madonna is one; Helen Keller is the other.

[nChrist]

   Good ones.

[HisDaughter]

'Stop telling God how big your storm is; Instead, tell the storm how big your God  is!'

[HisDaughter]

How I learned to believe in Angels
(anonymous)

I didn't always believe in angels. It seems we get to this place not believing in anything, it's an acquired taste.

I joined the Army shortly after the Tet offensive in 1968, not out of a strong sense of patriotism but for more personal and admittedly selfish reasons. In no time I found myself in the 1st Calvary division, a unit that had earned it's reputation as a can do savage band of warriors. It was a 1st cavalry colonel that immortalize the absurdity of war when he said," we had to destroy the village in order to save it."

After three months in country I had reach the low ebb of my life. Six months earlier pimples on my chin had been my most pressing life concern, and now I was watching myself, my buddies , my world rapidly descending into a hellish terrifying madness. This is where I was as I enter the outhouse at the base of the Phouc Vin air traffic control tower in the spring of 1969, despairing, the river of hope run dry. When I sat down to do my business I notice a small pile of news papers on the floor in the corner. I grabbed randomly into the stack knowing any diversion would be welcome. Miracle of miracles I pulled out my home town newspaper, The Sacramento Bee! You could have bowled me over with a feather. I could hardly believe it, I hadn't even seen a domestic newspaper in the three months I'd been in this God forsaken place.

So I dove in, reading each article as if it was the next delectable in a nine course meal. I was already feeling much better when the hammer hit. I opened the A section to page four and starred down in utter disbelief at a picture of my grandfather Elliot and his twin brother, my great uncle Ervin. The article was about them being the oldest living identical twins on the west coast.

It was if the cleansing waters of Eden had washed over me, transmuting the angst that was my life into a lightness of being better than any springtime morning growing up, I was rescued.

I'm pretty sure I didn't walk out of that outhouse, I floated.

I didn't know what had happened to me, I really wasn't doing much thinking, but I was changed. The feeling of wholeness I had, renewed me. I had no idea how but I sensed me and my world were going to be all right.

When this happened I had no thoughts of angels, that came years later, and grew, as I pondered the possibilities and considered the odds. The event itself was staggering as it rolled around the analytics that are my mind, but the timing was another matter, it kept leading me back to one irrevocable conclusion, Angels! I feel comfortable with that idea now, but it didn't find fertile ground until every other cause had been meticulously considered. It's blossomed into an optimism that permeates my world view. In some sense angels must be farmers, their crop being hope that matures into a greater fruit.

[HisDaughter]

Believe it or not, the following announcements actually appeared in various church bulletins. 

1. Don't let worry kill you -- let the church help. 
2. Thursday night - Potluck supper. Prayer and medication to follow. 
3. Remember in prayer the many who are sick of our church and community. 
4. For those of you who have children and don't know it, we have a nursery downstairs. 
5. The rosebud on the altar this morning is to announce the birth of David Alan Belzer, the sin of Rev. and Mrs. Julius Belzer. 

6. This afternoon there will be a meeting in the South and North ends of the church. Children will be baptized at both ends. 
7. Tuesday at 4:00 PM there will be an ice cream social. All ladies giving milk will please come early. 
8. Wednesday the ladies liturgy will meet. Mrs. Johnson will sing "Put me in my little bed" accompanied by the pastor. 
9. Thursday at 5:00 PM there will be a meeting of the Little Mothers Club. All ladies wishing to be "Little Mothers" will meet with the Pastor in his study. 
10. This being Easter Sunday, we will ask Mrs. Lewis to come forward and lay an egg on the altar. 

11. The service will close with "Little Drops of Water." One of the ladies will start quietly and the rest of the congregation will join in. 
12. Next Sunday a special collection will be taken to defray the cost of the new carpet. All those wishing to do something on the new carpet will come forward and do so. 
13. The ladies of the church have cast off clothing of every kind. They can be seen in the church basement Saturday. 
14. A bean supper will be held on Tuesday evening in the church hall. Music will follow. 
15. At the evening service tonight, the sermon topic will be "What is Hell?" Come early and listen to our choir practice. 

[nChrist]

       Thanks - I needed these laughs. I can't decide which one is my favorite - maybe 12 or 14.

[HisDaughter]

The Rich Family in Church

I'll never forget Easter 1946. I was 14, my little sister Ocy was 12, and my older sister Darlene 16. We lived at home with our mother, and the four of us knew what it was to do without many things. My dad had died five years before, leaving Mom with seven school kids to raise and no money.

By 1946 my older sisters were married and my brothers had left home. A month before Easter the pastor of our church announced that a special Easter offering would be taken to help a poor family. He asked everyone to save and give sacrificially.

When we got home, we talked about what we could do. We decided to buy 50 pounds of potatoes and live on them for a month. This would allow us to save $20 of our grocery money for the offering. When we thought that if we kept our electric lights turned out as much as possible and didn't listen to the radio, we'd save money on that month's electric bill. Darlene got as many house and yard cleaning jobs as possible, and both of us babysat for everyone we could. For 15 cents we could buy enough cotton loops to make three pot holders to sell for $1.

We made $20 on pot holders. That month was one of the best of our lives.

Every day we counted the money to see how much we had saved. At night we'd sit in the dark and talk about how the poor family was going to enjoy having the money the church would give them. We had about 80 people in church, so figured that whatever amount of money we had to give, the offering would surely be 20 times that much. After all, every Sunday the pastor had reminded everyone to save for the sacrificial offering.

The day before Easter, Ocy and I walked to the grocery store and got the manager to give us three crisp $20 bills and one $10 bill for all our change. We ran all the way home to show Mom and Darlene. We had never had so much money before.

That night we were so excited we could hardly sleep. We didn't care that we wouldn't have new clothes for Easter; we had $70 for the sacrificial offering.

We could hardly wait to get to church! On Sunday morning, rain was pouring. We didn't own an umbrella, and the church was over a mile from our home, but it didn't seem to matter how wet we got. Darlene had cardboard in her shoes to fill the holes. The cardboard came apart, and her feet got wet.

But we sat in church proudly. I heard some teenagers talking about the Smith girls having on their old dresses. I looked at them in their new clothes, and I felt rich.

When the sacrificial offering was taken, we were sitting on the second row from the front. Mom put in the $10 bill, and each of us kids put in a $20.

As we walked home after church, we sang all the way. At lunch Mom had a surprise for us. She had bought a dozen eggs, and we had boiled Easter eggs with our fried potatoes! Late that afternoon the minister drove up in his car. Mom went to the door, talked with him for a moment, and then came back with an envelope in her hand. We asked what it was, but she didn't say a word. She opened the envelope and out fell a bunch of money. There were three crisp $20 bills, one $10 and seventeen $1 bills.

Mom put the money back in the envelope. We didn't talk, just sat and stared at the floor. We had gone from feeling like millionaires to feeling like poor white trash. We kids had such a happy life that we felt sorry for anyone who didn't have our Mom and Dad for parents and a house full of brothers and sisters and other kids visiting constantly. We thought it was fun to share silverware and see whether we got the spoon or the fork that night.

We had two knifes that we passed around to whoever needed them. I knew we didn't have a lot of things that other people had, but I'd never thought we were poor.

That Easter day I found out we were. The minister had brought us the money for the poor family, so we must be poor. I didn't like being poor. I looked at my dress and worn-out shoes and felt so ashamed--I didn't even want to go back to church. Everyone there probably already knew we were poor!

I thought about school. I was in the ninth grade and at the top of my class of over 100 students. I wondered if the kids at school knew that we were poor. I decided that I could quit school since I had finished the eighth grade. That was all the law required at that time. We sat in silence for a long time.

Then it got dark, and we went to bed. All that week, we girls went to school and came home, and no one talked much. Finally on Saturday, Mom asked us what we wanted to do with the money. What did poor people do with money? We didn't know. We'd never known we were poor. We didn't want to go to church on Sunday, but Mom said we had to. Although it was a sunny day, we didn't talk on the way.

Mom started to sing, but no one joined in and she only sang one verse. At church we had a missionary speaker. He talked about how churches in Africa made buildings out of sun dried bricks, but they needed money to buy roofs. He said $100 would put a roof on a church. The minister said, "Can't we all sacrifice to help these poor people?" We looked at each other and smiled for the first time in a week.

Mom reached into her purse and pulled out the envelope. She passed it to Darlene. Darlene gave it to me, and I handed it to Ocy. Ocy put it in the offering.

When the offering was counted, the minister announced that it was a little over $100. The missionary was excited. He hadn't expected such a large offering from our small church. He said, "You must have some rich people in this church." Suddenly it struck us! We had given $87 of that "little over $100."

We were the rich family in the church! Hadn't the missionary said so? From that day on I've never been poor again. I've always remembered how rich I am because I have Jesus!