Time for another humor break.
Laughter, after all, is a divine gift, which reminds me of Frederick Buechner's book, The Son of Laughter. Great read about Jacob of the Bible. Almost everything Buechner (pronounced BEEK-ner) writes is great.
Anyway, here are some faith-based jokes, mostly collected from beliefnet.com. Enjoy.
1. After a long illness, a woman died and arrived at the Gates of Heaven.
While she was waiting for Saint Peter to greet her, she peeked through the gates. She saw a beautiful banquet table. Sitting all around were her parents and all the other people she had loved and who had died before her.
They saw her and began calling greetings to her. “Hello!” “How are you? We've been waiting for you!” “Good to see you!”
When Saint Peter came by, the woman said to him, “This is such a wonderful place! How do I get in?”
“You have to spell a word,” Saint Peter told her.
“Which word?” the woman asked. “Love.”
The woman correctly spelled love, and Saint Peter welcomed her into heaven.
About six months later, Saint Peter came to the woman and asked her to watch the Gates of Heaven for him that day.
While the woman was guarding the Gates of Heaven, her husband arrived.
“I'm surprised to see you,” the woman said. “How have you been?”
“Oh, I've been doing pretty well since you died,” her husband told her. “I married the beautiful young nurse who took care of you while you were ill. And then I won the lottery. I sold the little house you and I lived in and bought a big mansion. And my wife and I traveled all around the world. We were on vacation and I went water skiing today. I fell, the ski hit my head, and here I am. How do I get in?”
“You have to spell a word,” the woman told him.
“Which word?” her husband asked.
“Czechoslovakia.”
2. Two Hindu swamis were in conversation.
One said to the other, “How did you like my latest book, 'The Art of Levitation'?”
His companion replied, “It kept me up all night.”
3. There were two evil brothers. They were rich and used their money to keep their ways from the public eye. They even attended the same church and looked to be perfect Christians.
Then, their pastor retired and a new one was hired. Not only could he see right through the brothers' deception, but he also spoke well and true, and the church started to swell in numbers.
A fundraising campaign was started to build a new assembly.
All of a sudden, one of the brothers died. The remaining brother sought out the new pastor the day before the funeral and handed him a check for the amount needed to finish paying for the new building.
“I have only one condition,” he said. “At his funeral, you must say my brother was a saint.”
The pastor gave his word and deposited the check.
The next day at the funeral, the pastor did not hold back. “He was an evil man,” he said. “He cheated on his wife and abused his family.” After going on in this vein for a small time, he concluded with, “But, compared to his brother, he was a saint.”
4. A Hindu devotee asked God, represented by the multi-armed Lord Narayana, this question. “My dear Lord,” he said. “I understand that you have innumerable inconceivable potencies. But out of all of them the energy of light seems to be the most amazing. Light pervades the spiritual world, it illuminates the material universes, and life is impossible without it.” He continued, “I would like to know how you make it work.”
“Oh, that's easy,” was the reply. “Many hands make light work.”
5. A man suffered a serious heart attack and had bypass surgery. He awakened to find himself in the care of nuns at a Catholic hospital.
As he was recovering, a nun asked how he was going to pay the bill. He replied, in a raspy voice, “No health insurance.”
The nun asked if he had money in the bank. He replied, “No money in the bank.”
The nun asked, “Do you have a relative who could help you?”
He said, “Just a spinster sister, who is a nun.”
The nun, slightly perturbed, said, “Nuns are not spinsters! Nuns are married to God.”
The patient replied, “Then send the bill to my brother-in-law.”
6. The minister was preoccupied with thoughts of how he was going to ask the congregation to come up with more money than they were expecting for repairs to the church building.
Therefore, he was annoyed to find that the regular organist was sick and a substitute had been brought in at the last minute. The substitute wanted to know what to play.
“Here's a copy of the service,” he said impatiently. “But, you'll have to
think of something to play after I make the announcement about the
finances.”
During the service, the minister paused and said, “Brothers and Sisters, we are in great difficulty; the roof repairs cost twice as much as we expected and we need $4,000 more. Any of you who can pledge $100 or more, please stand up.”
At that moment, the substitute organist played “The Star Spangled Banner.”
And that is how the substitute became the regular organist!
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Today's religious holiday: Corpus Christi (Catholic).
Secular institutions can give you fellowship, charitable work and many other things normally associated with churches, synagogues, mosques and other houses or worship. But worship is unique.
