I love things like this. They’re so ridiculous that they’re funny. Plus, every now and then you just need something to take your mind off all the crazy in the world. I’ll do my best to give credit where credit is due at the end of this post:

GENERAL:

1. Never take a beer to a job interview.
2. Always identify people in your yard before shooting at them.
3. It’s considered tacky to take a cooler to church.
4. If you have to vacuum the bed, it is time to change the sheets.
5. Even if you’re certain that you are included in the will, it is still rude to drive the U-Haul to the funeral home.

DINING OUT:

1. When decanting wine, make sure that you tilt the paper cup and pour slowly so as not to “bruise” the fruit of the vine.
2. If drinking directly from the bottle, always hold it with your hands.

ENTERTAINING IN YOUR HOME:

1. A centerpiece for the table should never be anything prepared by a taxidermist.
2. Do not allow the dog to eat at the table, no matter how good his manners are.

PERSONAL HYGIENE:

1. While ears need to be cleaned regularly, this is a job that should be done in private using one’s OWN truck keys.
2. Even if you live alone, deodorant is not a waste of good money.
3. Use of proper toiletries can only delay bathing for a few days.
4. Dirt and grease under the fingernails is a social no-no, as they tend to detract from a woman’s jewelry and alter the taste of finger foods.

DATING (Outside the Family):

1. Always offer to bait your date’s hook, especially on the first date.
2. Be assertive. Let her know you’re interested: “I’ve been wanting to go out with you since I read that stuff on the bathroom wall two years ago.”
3. Establish with her parents what time she is expected back. Some will say 10:00 PM. Others might say “Monday.” If the latter is the answer, it is the man’s responsibility to get her to school on time.

THEATRE ETIQUETTE:

1. Crying babies should be taken to the lobby and picked up immediately after the movie has ended.
2. Refrain from talking to characters on the screen. Tests have proven they can’t hear you.

WEDDINGS:

1. Livestock is usually a poor choice for a wedding gift.
2. Kissing the bride for more than 5 seconds may get you shot.
3. For the groom, at least, rent a tux. A leisure suit with a cummerbund and a clean bowling shirt can create a tacky appearance.
4. Though uncomfortable, say “yes” to socks and shoes for this special occasion.

DRIVING ETIQUETTE:

1. Dim your headlights for approaching vehicles, even if the gun is loaded and the deer is in sight.
2. When approaching a four-way stop, the vehicle with the largest tires does not always have the right of way.
3. Never tow another car using panty hose and duct tape.
4. When sending your wife down the road with a gas can, it is impolite to ask her to bring back beer too.
5. Do not lay rubber while traveling in a funeral procession.

I got this from the Ted Bell Fans Facebook page. I tried to provide the link to the actual page, but couldn’t figure out how to do it, so use your imagination.

“If I could hear Christ praying for me in the next room, I would not fear a million enemies. Yet distance makes no difference. He is praying for me”  (Robert Murray McCheyne).

That is mind blowing. Not only did Jesus take my place and die for me, but He lives for me and intercedes for me. The very one who is both God and man prays for me by name.

I’m always flattered and grateful when I know the people in my life are praying for me. Yet how often do I routinely take for granted that Jesus Himself prays for me. And His prayers are the ones God always hears and always grants and always blesses.

That in itself gives me great comfort. That gives me such an overwhelming peace. Even when I don’t know what to pray to Jesus (which is often these days), Jesus knows what to pray for me. Even when I have no words that I can articulate, God the Spirit takes translates those groans and sighs into petitions, God the Son takes my longings to God the Father, and God the Father knows how to give good gifts to those who ask in faith.

“But because Jesus lives forever, his priesthood lasts forever. Therefore he is able, once and forever, to save those who come to God through him. He lives forever to intercede with God on their behalf” (Hebrews 7:24-25, NLT).

This applies to so much in life, not just employment. I think God can even the most uncomfortable situations and use them as teaching moments if we are willing to stay under and learn.

I don’t for one moment use this to advocate for staying in an abusive relationship or toxic environment where your safety is in question. By all means get out of those as soon as you can.

But if it’s not an ideal work environment or situation that is less than the best, then you can learn to be faithful until God calls you away to something else. You can work not for the employer or the supervisor but as for God directly. You can make your workplace your mission field and your job can be your act of worship.

I think so many times you learn how to give yourself grace. You’ll have days when you don’t respond to stress as well as you probably should, when you lose your temper, when you generally have a sucky attitude all day.

The point is not to stay in that place. The point is not to beat yourself up about it. The point is to make the next day a brand new start and pray for grace to do better. After all, it’s not about perfection but progress. And mostly it’s about trust and faithfulness.

That blows my mind. It’s also very true.

How many times do I take my eternal security for granted and then turn around to get stressed out by something that I probably won’t remember five years from now? How often do I go to thanking God for saving me to a future in Heaven to worrying about how this current situation will play out and how I (and not God) will fix it?

Which is harder to manage? An eternity or a day? Forever or a week? Whatever my present anxiety is about is fleeting. The Bible calls it a light affliction in comparison to the eternal weight of glory that awaits.

I suppose I could beat myself up for being dumb. Or I could choose to say that in this moment I am trusting God for my eternity and for my present, because both are in good hands. Both are in nail-scarred hands.

That would have been so wonderful tonight. It wasn’t as hot as it could have been, but the humidity was palpable. It was like a sticky heat. My sweat glands immediately went into overdrive and I suddenly wished for a misting tent to walk through.

Remind me how many days is it until fall?

I don’t mind heat. If it’s a dry heat, it’s bearable. But throw in that humidity and I feel like I’m trying to breathe through a warm moist towel. It is just no fun at all.

I saw one guy on a skateboard wearing a jacket and I think I sweated even more just from the sight of all the excess clothing. I was sympathy sweating.

If I can only hang on until September, then I know fall is nigh.

“‘Sex,’ I was pretty sure, meant whether you were a boy or girl, and ‘sin’ made Tante Jans very angry, but what the two together meant I could not imagine. And so, seated next to Father in the train compartment, I suddenly asked, ‘Father, what is sexsin?’
He turned to look at me, as he always did when answering a question, but to my surprise he said nothing. At last he stood up, lifted his traveling case from the rack over our heads, and set it on the floor.
‘Will you carry it off the train, Corrie?’ he said.
I stood up and tugged at it. It was crammed with the watches and spare parts he had purchased that morning.
‘It’s too heavy,’ I said.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘And it would be a pretty poor father who would ask his little girl to carry such a load. It’s the same way, Corrie, with knowledge. Some knowledge is too heavy for children. When you are older and stronger you can bear it. For now you must trust me to carry it for you.’ (Carrie ten Boom, The Hiding Place).

I love that picture of a child trying to carry the suitcase. Of course it’s too heavy. No child should have to carry such a load. It’s the same way when we try to sexualize kids and teach them sexuality before they’re ready and able to carry the weight of such knowledge.

But I think primarily God does that with us. So much of what we don’t understand is because we’re not able to carry it yet. We’re not to the place where our minds can wrap around all that God is doing. So we accuse God of ill intentions and blame Him for our pain.

But when we hang on and keep trusting in the Father, one day we understand. One day it all makes sense. One day we see that it could not have been any other way to get us where we are now. And we see that God carried far more of a burden for us that we carried in ourselves.

Ultimately, He carried it up to a hill called Golgotha and it led to a cross where He bore all our sins so that we would never have to carry such a burden ever again. He said that we should take His yoke because it’s easy to carry and His burden is light.

And one day we will all understand.

“When it comes to pain, God isn’t often in the business of taking it away. Instead, he adds to it. He is more of a giver than a taker. He doesn’t take away my darkness, he adds light. He doesn’t spare me of thirst, he brings water. He doesn’t cure my loneliness, he comes near. So why do we believe that when we are in pain, it must mean God is far?” (Jane Kristen Marczewski aka Nightbirde).

Sometimes, it’s easy to get lulled into a sort of false peace by thinking that this life is forever and this world is our paradise. Then someone we love gets sick and dies. We see some horrific tragedy on the news. We hear about so many evils that seem to go unpunished.

I remember what a pastor once said. This life at best is like a very clean bus station. Or you could say a very tidy airport terminal. It’s great for a while, but no one wants to live at a Greyhound bus station for the rest of their life. No one that I know of dreams of moving into the Nashville airport.

This life is temporary. It’s also messy. As another pastor always says, it’s a beautiful but broken world. We get glimpses of heavenly joy mingled with earthly sorrows that are sometimes too much to bear. If you and I focused on this world alone with all its sadness and loss, it would be very easy to give into despair and to see death as the only way out.

But we have a God who came near. Because we couldn’t get to Him, He came to us in the person of Jesus, not to merely tell us the way to heaven or even to show us but to take us there by being the way to get there.

In this life, God doesn’t take away the pain but adds comfort. He doesn’t take away the fear but adds peace. He doesn’t take away the storms and dark valleys but walks with us through them, sometimes carrying us.

The best part for me is that I will never travel down a path where Jesus hasn’t already gone before me. I won’t ever walk through anything where God is not with me. He is still Emmanuel, God with us.

“Goods are given to us to be used, but not to be stored away. Just as Israel in the desert received manna daily from God and did not have to worry about food and drink, and just as the manna which was stored from one day for another rotted, so should Jesus’ disciples receive their share daily from God. But if they store it up as lasting treasure, they will spoil both the gift and themselves. The heart clings to collected treasure. Stored–up possessions get between me and God. Where my treasure is, there is my trust, my security, my comfort, my God. Treasure means idolatry.

But where is the boundary between the goods I am supposed to use and the treasure I am not supposed to have? If we turn the statement around and say, What your heart clings to is your treasure, then we have the answer. It can be a very modest treasure; it is not a question of size. Everything depends on the heart, on you. If I continue to ask how can I recognize what my heart clings to, again there is a clear and simple answer: everything which keeps you from loving God above all things, everything which gets between you and your obedience to Jesus is the treasure to which your heart clings” (Dietrich Bonhoeffer).

“Wherever your treasure is, there the desires of your heart will also be” (Matthew 6:21, NLT).

That’s a good prayer. It’s also so counter-cultural.

This culture thrives on breeding discontent. It’s all about going into debt to buy things you don’t need to impress people you don’t like or who don’t like you. It’s really about the appearance of wealth more than actual wealth.

But once you are content and can say, “I have enough,” then you are free. You’re no longer a slave to stuff or status. You know that you have a treasure in heaven that neither fades nor rusts and that no one can steal.

Then you are free.

I love good stories. I love books, I love movies, I love good story songs, and I love to listen to people telling stories about their lives. That’s probably why I’m a sucker for Audible.

It helps that I have a long commute to and from work. It’s like when I was younger and we’d listen to books on tape or CD while we were traveling to pass the time. It’s basically the same, but with no chance of the tapes messing up or the CDs skipping.

Lately, I’ve been on a Charles Martin binge. I think the book I’m listening to at the moment is his 8th book. I started from the first with The Dead Don’t Dance and have been moving in chronological order through his catalog. Yep, I’m a big ol’ nerd.

He’s a great writer. If I had to describe his style to someone, I’d say that he’s similar to Nicholas Sparks but a better writer and more faith-based. It’s not so much “Christian” as it is God-saturated.

I have 8 more books to go after this one. I’m not sure what I’ll do with my life after, but maybe he’ll write another one in the mean time. Or maybe I’ll just binge another author. Oh, those first world problems.