Hanging

When our family lived in Texas, our neighbors across the street were the Zimmers.   

They had a son my age (about four).

One day he and I were playing cowboys.  

Dad arrived home just as I was turning blue from the hanging!

Moon Shine

Years ago, my mother had completed her education through the 8th grade at a one-room school just on the edge of their farm.

When it came time to attend high school,  she was to enroll in a school 6 miles away in town.

Because it was horse and buggy days, it was deemed best that she board in a local hotel rather than travel back and forth to the farm each day.

It was her first extended time away from home, and she was terribly homesick.

When telling me the story many years later, she explained the solution:

"When I looked out the hotel window and saw the moon that first night, I thought, "That is the same moon which is shining on our farm!"

That made it much better.

I suppose we all need a little Moon Shine sometimes.

Religious Rules 02

One day I was visiting with a member of a local church.

He assured me that (unlike other churches, I presume) his church had no "man-made" rules - only God's rules.

Old Testament Letters to Advice Columnist 6

Dear Ann,

I love my husband.  

But now he spends all his time looking at magazines with pictures of huge fancy boats.  

I tell him, "Noah, we can't afford one of those things."  

But then he gets mad and says he will just build one himself.

Sometimes I just want to move in with my mother.

Mustard Seed

I heard this tale years ago:

An older couple attended an evening church service in Norway.

They scratched out a living on a small farm on the steep, rocky side of a huge mountain.

Farming, and life in general, was difficult for them.

So, they listened with rapt attention when the preacher told the parable of the Mustard Seed:

If they only had faith no greater than the tiny seed of the mustard bush, it would move a mountain!

On their way home they decided:

"Tonight we will have faith that our mountain will be moved.  Farming on flat land will be wonderful!"

As they crawled into bed, they concentrated on what they had heard.

With the breaking of dawn, the wife flew to the bedroom window.

She opened the shutters.

There stood the mountain!

"Just as I thought."