Can't Hide The Truth

A man is sitting in his armchair when his wife comes up behind him and hits him over the head with a frying pan.

"What was that for?" he exclaims.

"I found a note in your trousers saying 'Gloria, 3:00 pm.'"

The husband quickly explains, "Gloria is the name of a horse that was running at 3:00 pm and I did not want to forget."

The wife apologizes and they make up.

A few days later, he is sitting there again when she comes and hits him with an even bigger frying pan and knocks him out cold.  When he comes round he exclaims, "What was that for?"

She replies, "Your horse just called."

- Craig A. Smith, Sermon Illustrations For An Asian Audience (OMF Literature, Inc, 2004)

Incomplete Healing

It is midnight in Israel, and three hundred worshipers gather in a floodlit enclosure as they thump tambourines and clap hands in the warm night. They sing ya’ase shalom, which means “he will make peace.” Though the words refer to God, the crowd thinks of another.

“I will clean the people,” says Rabbi Yaakov Ifargan, thirty-four, slinging candles into a brazier until the flame rises six meters and wax sizzles onto the dusty ground. Ifargan is the most prominent new leader in a wave of cabalistic mysticism sweeping Israel, particularly among the 60 percent of the population known as Mizrahis, those who have emigrated from North Africa and the Middle East. Ifargan is a tzaddik, a holy man.

Almost four hours into this ceremony, the rabbi turns to a row of followers confined to their wheelchairs sweating near the fire. “Are you a believer?” he asks. Gabriel Rafael, twenty-two, has multiple sclerosis. People in the crowd raise him by his arms. He takes a few steps, scuffing his feet through the dirt, then collapses into his wheelchair. Those around him wait to hear that a miracle has taken place. What they hear instead is Gabriel say, “I do feel stronger.”

 — Matt Rees, “Miracle Makers,” 
Time (September 25, 2000)

Lesson In Honesty Resounds Even Beyond The Classroom

My alma mater has an honor code that is respected throughout the university. Freshmen pledge to do their own academic work with integrity and to report those who do not to the student-run honor council.

Student signatures remain on display in the lobby of the Sarratt Student Center throughout their four years at the university. Alongside the signatures is a statement of the honor code as well as the words of the man for whom the building is named. Madison Sarratt, longtime dean of men at Vanderbilt University and a teacher in the mathematics department, died in 1978. He wrote, “Today I am going to give you two examinations, one in trigonometry and one in honesty. I hope you will pass them both, but if you must fail one, let it be trigonometry, for there are many good [people] in this world today who cannot pass an examination in trigonometry, but there are no good [people] in the world who cannot pass an examination in honesty.”

Sarratt’s former students still speak of the effect those words have had on their adult lives.

 — Gaynelle Doll, “The Nature of Virtue,” Vanderbilt Today (Summer – Fall 1999)

Keeping Each Other Afloat

In Guideposts magazine Donald Vairin of Oceanside, California, told of serving as a young hospital corpsman in the invasion of Guam during World War II.  Suddenly his boat came to a grinding halt.  They had hit a coral reef, and the commanding officer ordered everyone off the ship.

Donald jumped into the ocean and sank like a rock, his carbine rifle, medical pack, canteen, and boots dragging him down.  He forced himself to the surface, gasping for air, only to sink again.  He tried to pull off his boots, but the effort exhausted him, and he suddenly realized he wasn't going to make it.

Just then he saw a man thrashing in the water next to him, and in desperation he clutched onto him.  That proved enough to hold him up and get him to the reef where he was picked up by a rescue boat.  But Donald felt so guilty about grabbing the drowning man to save himself that he never told anyone what had happened.

About six months later, on shore leave in San Francisco, he stopped in a restaurant.  A sailor in uniform waved him over to sit with him, and as he did so he announced to his friends, "This is my buddy.  He saved my life."

"What are you talking about?" asked Donald.

"Don't you remember," said the man.  "We were in the water together at Guam.  You grabbed on to me.  I was going down, and you held me up."

- Donald Vairin, "His Mysterious Ways," Guideposts (September 1999)

Confined To The Belly

For several months a little boy had been watching his mother's stomach increase in size.  It was becoming harder and harder to sit on her lap.

"Mommy, why is your stomach getting so big?"

He was told that his little sister was inside her stomach.

"Mommy, why is my little sister inside your stomach?"

He was told that he used to be in her stomach too.

When the boy's father got home, the boy asked his father if he could talk to him in private.  They went to the boy's room.

"Daddy, I need answers to two questions:  First, why does Mommy keep eating little kids?  And second, how did I escape?"

- submitted by Fred Lowery, Parables, Etc. (December 1993)

A Perfect Time To Be Objective

In the early days of the Civil War, Robert E. Lee was severely criticized by General Whiting.  It might have been expected that Lee would seize any opportunity to get even with Whiting.  The opportunity presented itself when Jefferson Davis called Lee in for consultation.

Davis wanted to know what Lee thought of General Whiting.  Without hesitation Lee commended him in high terms and called him one of the ablest men in the army.  Afterwards, a fellow officer took Lee aside and wanted to know why he had not told Davis the things Whiting had said about him.

Lee answered, "It was my understanding that the President wanted to know my opinion of Whiting, not Whiting's opinion of me."

- Bits & Pieces (The Economics Press, Inc., 1996)

Hopelessness In The Midst Of All The Pleasure

According to Thomas Reeves in his book about John F. Kennedy, A Question of Character, JFK became very promiscuous after the deaths of his brother and sister, Joe and Kathleen.  Feeling that he hadn't long to live himself, he "accelerated his pursuit of pleasure.  Especially after Eunice moved out of the Georgetown house in 1948, girls went in and out of Jack's bed in such numbers that he often neglected to learn their first names, referring to them the next morning merely as "sweetie" or "kiddo."

"Jack confided a bit in one woman who resisted his advances... (She later wrote): 'During one of these conversations I once asked him why he was doing it--why he was acting like his father, why he was avoiding real relationships, why he was taking a chance on getting caught in a scandal at the same time he was trying to make his career take off.  He took a while trying to formulate an answer.  Finally he shrugged and said, "I don' know, really.  I guess I can't help it."'"

He spoke those words with a "sad expression on his face.  He looked like a little boy about to cry."

- Thomas C. Reeves, A Question of Character (The Free Press, 1991)