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WIT & WISDOM - December 31, 1998 ~~~~~~~ THOUGHTS: "Confrontation doesn't always bring a solution to the problem, but until you confront the problem, there will be no solution." – James Baldwin [1] ~~~~~~~ SPECIAL THOUGHTS: BETWEEN THE YEARS Our Lord and our God. We joy in Thee. Without Thy Help we could not face unafraid the year before us. I stand between the years. The Light of My Presence is flung across the year to come - the radiance of the Sun of Righteousness. Backward, over the past year, is My Shadow thrown, hiding trouble and sorrow and disappointment. Dwell not on the past - only on the present. Only use the past as the trees use My Sunlight to absorb it, to make from it in after days the warming fire-rays. So store only the blessings from Me, the Light of the World. Encourage yourselves by the thought of these. Bury every fear of the future, of poverty for those dear to you, of suffering, of loss. Bury all thought of unkindness and bitterness, all your dislikes, your resentments, your sense of failure, your disappointment in others and in yourselves, your gloom, your despondency, and let us leave them all, buried, and go forward to a new and risen life. Remember that you must not see as the world sees. I hold the year in My Hands - in trust for you. But I shall guide you one day at a time. Leave the rest with Me. You must not anticipate the gift by fears or thoughts of the days ahead. And for each day I shall supply the wisdom and the strength. GOD CALLING, Edited by A. J. Russell [2] ~~~~~~~ THIS & THAT: Here's a collection of classic slips of the #2 pencil by our best and brightest young students: Part 1 of 2 Homer wrote THE ODDITY. The author of AESOP'S FABLES was Aesophagus. If one angle of a triangle is more than 90 degrees, the triangle is obscene. Prose may be divided into two parts: friction and non-friction. Ibid was a famous Latin poet. A yokel is the way people talk to each other in the Alps. Acrimony is what a man gives his divorced wife. In Christianity a man can only have one wife. This is called monotony. FILET MIGNON is an opera by Puccini. According to Shakespeare, life is a tail told by an idiot full of sound and furry. Two shots rang out. Two of the servants fell dead, the other went through his hat. It 1937, Eugene O'Neill won a Pullet surprise. (uh, Pulitzer Prize) Doctors say that fatal diseases are the worst. Doctors practice medicine until they finally get it right. Quinine is a valuable medicine that comes from barking trees. Damp weather is very hard on the sciences. Nero was a cruel tyrant who would torture his subjects by playing the fiddle to them. [3] ~~~~~~~ KEEP SMILING: When Rev. H. J. Dick of Whitewater, Kansas came to the end of a very long day at the New Year's Eve midnight service, he announced to the gathered, "Let us now stand and sing 'Another Dear is Yawning.'" [4] ~~~~~~~ TRIVIA: "Rock of Ages" - There is no greater hymn, perhaps, in the language; there is none more universally familiar. It has been the comfort of thousands in their last hour. When, many years ago, a ship sunk in the Bay of Biscay, a man who was saved was asked what the passengers were doing. He said that the last he heard was "Rock of Ages" sung by all who could sing. In multitudes of cases, in joy and in sorrow, in times of danger and amid scenes of peace, it has been the language of the heart. And yet, familiar as it is, and precious as it is, possibly there may be those to whom it is not quite clear what Toplady meant by the figure in the first two lines of the hymn. In Isa. 26:4, the expression is "everlasting strength," but the marginal reading is "rock of ages." It is probable that the poet got his imagery here. But to the writer the real meaning has been brought out with beautiful clearness since reading of the circumstances under which the lines were written. There is, not far from where Toplady used to serve as curate in charge, a great rock rising up by the side of the road. In the midst, as it were between two massive towers, is a deep cleft. One day in passing he was driven into the shelter of this cleft to escape the fury of a thunder storm, and it was while waiting there, that he composed his great hymn. - By Indian Witness, Signs of the Times, January 3, 1906 [5] ~~~~~~~ CONTRIBUTORS: [1] (Encounter Weekly [2] (Chris Lack) [3] (David and Barbara Vick via Mikey's Funnies [4] (Laugh-A-Lot! [5] (Dale Galusha |