Gilbert, South Carolina is such a small community, I was surprised that they had a community paper. I asked one old-timer about it.

He replied, “We all know what everybody else is doing, but we like to read the paper anyway to see who’s been caught at it.”

One Liner
“The closest to perfection anyone ever comes is when he or she fills out a job application form.”

Thought for the day
“Put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness” Ephesians 4:24

God uses his Word, people, and circumstances to mold us. All three are indispensable for character development.

A ragged individual, stranded for several months on a small desert island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, noticed a bottle lying in the sand with a piece of paper in it.

Rushing to the bottle, he pulled out the cork and with shaking hands withdrew the message:

“Due to lack of activity,” he read, “we regretfully have found it necessary to cancel your email account.”

One Liner
We never really grow up; we only learn how to act in public.

Thought for the day
Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you. Romans 12:2 (Msg)

Confession (saying the same thing God says) leads to repentance (thinking the way God thinks). Saying what God says enables you to think what God thinks. And when you learn to think differently, you begin to behave differently

An elderly rabbi, having just retired from his duties in the temple, finally decides to fulfill his lifelong fantasy to taste pork.

He goes to a hotel in the Catskills in the off-season (not his usual one, mind you), enters the empty dining hall and sits down at a table far in the corner.  The waiter arrives, and the rabbi orders roast suckling pig.

As the rabbi is waiting, struggling with his conscience, a family from his congregation walks in!  They immediately see the rabbi and, since no one should eat alone, they join him.  Shocked, the rabbi begins to sweat.

At last, the waiter arrives with a huge domed platter.  He lifts the lid to reveal nothing else but roast suckling pig with a big apple in its mouth.

“This place is amazing!” cries the rabbi.  “You order a baked apple, and look what you get!”

One Liner
Into every life some rain must fall – usually when your car windows are down.

Thought for the day
“Let us keep our eyes fixed on Jesus, on whom our faith depends from beginning to end.” Hebrews 12:2 (GNT)

You need to keep your eyes on your master or you’ll get distracted. Get your mind off your circumstances and your problems and focus on God’s goodness to you in your past, his closeness to you in your present and his power to help you in your future.  

Interviewer: “If you could have dinner with any person, living or dead, who would it be?”

Applicant: “The living one.”

One Liner
I know a guy who does the work of three men…Moe, Larry & Curly.

Thought for the day
“Now you belong to him . . . in order that you might be useful in the service of God.” (Romans 7:4 TEV)

How much of the time are you being useful in the service of God? In some churches in China, they welcome new believers by saying, “Jesus now has a new pair of eyes to see with, new ears to listen with, new hands to help with, and a new heart to love others with.”

A doctor wrote about an epitaph he had seen in a local cemetery:

“In memory of my father: gone to join his appendix, his tonsils, his olfactory nerve, a kidney, an eardrum, and a leg prematurely removed by an intern who needed the experience.

One Liner
“What’s the use of having ignorance if you can’t show it?” – Lou Costello

Thought for the day
“[A]nd let us run with endurance the race that God has set before us.” Hebrews 12:1c (NLT)

You are supposed to run the race God has set for you. Not the race you set for yourself, not the race other people set for you, and not the race culture sets for you. You only run the race God has set for you. If you try to run any other course, you are going to fail and get discouraged.