Friday, September 18, 2009

A Golf Joke

There were three people in heaven who decided one day to play a round of golf at the heavenly country club. The first man stepped up to the tee, hit his drive, and watched as it headed straight for the water hazard. Just as the ball was about to land in the water, he raised his club, pointed it out over the water, and the waters parted, allowing the ball to land on dry ground. He walked out between the two columns of water, and hit a perfect second shot, right in the middle of the green. One of his partners said, “Wow, good shot, Moses!” The second man walked up to the tee, hit his drive, and watched as it took a nearly identical flight path, straight toward the water. But when the ball hit, it landed and stayed right on top of the water. He walked out across the water and hit a second shot which was also identical, landing at the center of the green. Moses told him, “Hey, that’s a pretty good shot yourself, Jesus!” Then the third man came to the tee box, teed up and hit his drive. The drive took a nasty slice and went straight into the trees, caroming off in the wrong direction, heading for the out-of-bounds marker. Right at that moment, a squirrel who happened to be nearby saw the ball and thought it might be good to eat, so it grabbed the ball and started running towards the fairway. When the squirrel was about halfway across the fairway, suddenly an eagle swooped down out of nowhere and grabbed the squirrel in its claws, flying away with both squirrel and ball. Just as the eagle’s flight took it across the green, it lost its grip on the squirrel and dropped it. The squirrel landed flat on its belly, jarring the ball loose, which then took two bounces and landed squarely in the center of the cup. Moses cast a disgusted glance at Jesus and said, “That’s why I can’t STAND to play golf with your Dad.”

Not Quite Good Enough

There was once an optimistic farmer who couldn’t wait to greet each new day with a resounding, "Good morning, God!" He lived near a woman whose morning greeting was more like, "Good God... morning?" They were each a trial to the other. Where he saw opportunity, she saw problems. Where he was satisfied, she was discontented. One bright morning he exclaimed, "Look at the beautiful sky! Did you see that glorious sunrise?" "Yeah," she countered. "It’ll probably get so hot the crops will scorch!" During an afternoon shower, he commented, "Isn’t this wonderful? Mother Nature is giving the corn a drink today!” And if it doesn’t stop before too long," came the sour reply, "we’ll wish we’d taken out flood insurance on the crops!" Convinced that he could instill some awe and wonder in her hardened attitude, he bought a remarkable dog. It could perform remarkable and impossible feats, which, the farmer thought, would surely amaze even his neighbor. So he invited her to watch his dog perform.” Fetch!" he commanded, as he tossed a stick out into a lake. The dog bounded after the stick, walked on the water, and retrieved it. "What do you think of that?" he asked, smiling. "Not much of a dog" she frowned. "Can’t even swim, can he?"

Saturday, September 5, 2009

Actions Speak Louder Than Words

[This story was told by Rev. Grace Imathiu at the Christian Educators Fellowship Conference in New Orleans in October of 2002.]

Back in 1989, I was a student at Cambridge University in England. I was doing research on the beginnings of the Methodist Church in Kenya. And I was very curious because my Grandfather on my father’s side was among the very first Christians in my home area. And my father was so grateful for the missionaries who came all the way to Kenya that my father named all his children after the missionaries. Even my grandmother, Grace, chose to let go of her African name and take the name of Grace Alvaden (sp?), the first missionary from England to die in Nehru (sp?), my hometown. My brother Fred is named after Fred Valenda (sp?), another missionary. Oh, we loved these men and women who left their culture, their homelife, to bring us the Good News of Jesus Christ! And I was reading so much about them in 1989 - I went to the library in London where the Methodist Missionary Society keeps its papers, and I read the letters - handwritten! - by these figures who had become legends and myths and ancestors to my Christian faith.

And one letter in there was a letter from one of my Grandfather’s favorite mentors - a letter from my Grandfather’s spiritual mother and father. And in that letter, there was attached another letter from the missionary’s wife, and she was describing how one day she got homesick for the kind of food they have in England. And so she decided to cook for her husband some scones, that look like muffins. And she said that she was making the scones. And she got them ready. And she called her husband indoors. She went to the kitchen to get the tea, and she heard him say, “How wonderful - scones! And they have raisins in them!” Well, she dropped the kettle right there and then! She had not put any raisins in the scones! She rushed over, stopped him from putting them in his mouth, and they did the investigation. You would not believe, they found in the flour bin a dead mother rat and a small baby rat. And the raisins were not raisins, but - you know what! My goodness!

Now the story would have been funny if it had stopped there. But she went on to write and say, “I did not waste those scones. I gave them to my African boys. And they liked them very much, because I had put plenty of jam on them.”

And when I read that letter, I could not believe these words. And my whole world crashed right there. My entire trust in God crashed right there. How could anyone pack their suitcase and their Bible and travel all the way across the sea to innocent African people, who trust them with their very lives, who gave up their culture and their names....My faith found itself in such a slippery place. It fell, and shattered. And I promised I would not be a Christian, I would not be a Methodist, if this was what Methodism was about.