Try to do the top ten in order before you look.

What a lot of fun.

I always feel like …[we are] on the front lines, and we’re in combat, and we’re receiving fire and returning fire. And we’re running out of bullets, and we’re running out of guns, and we’re running out of food, and we’re running out of water. And supply lines had better advance.

You need to guess the context and identity of the speaker before you look.

When we “use” God, the church, and ministry to appease religious curiosity and demand, determine winners and losers, gain an upper hand or prove we are better than our competitors, we become participants in death: life without God

—Michael Pasquarello

You need to guess the top 5 American cities before you look.

Check it out.

When I pay 100% of the airfare, 100% of the plane is a minimum requirement.

–ET, commenting on the bizarre story of a SriLankan Airlines Airplane which announced it was taking off with a small section of its wingtip missing

MOSCOW (AP) — A small Russian city just got a really big addition: a 17-pound, 1 ounce baby whose mother had already delivered 11 other children Nurse Svetlana Gildeyeva also said the Sept. 17 birth went smoothly, and mother and the child were fine. The Guinness Book of World Records says the heaviest baby ever was born in the United States in 1879. It weighed 23 pounds, 12 ounces.

21. However, secondly, we believe that there remains a lack of clarity about the stance of The Episcopal Church, especially its position on the authorisation of Rites of Blessing for persons living in same-sex unions. There appears to us to be an inconsistency between the position of General Convention and local pastoral provision. We recognise that the General Convention made no explicit resolution about such Rites and in fact declined to pursue resolutions which, if passed, could have led to the development and authorisation of them. However, we understand that local pastoral provision is made in some places for such blessings. It is the ambiguous stance of The Episcopal Church which causes concern among us.

22. The standard of teaching stated in Resolution 1.10 of the Lambeth Conference 1998 asserted that the Conference “cannot advise the legitimising or blessing of same sex unions”.

–The Anglican Primates Tanzania Communique

Catching up on some recent blog entries at the Covenant blog, I appreciated Craig Uffman’s post wondering if Dilbert cartoonist Scott Adams was thinking about the Anglican Communion when he drew this Dilbert cartoon.

The rush and pressure of modern life are a form, perhaps the most common form, of its innate violence. To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything, is to succumb to violence. More than that, it is cooperation in violence.

–Thomas Merton

Answer the questions and see.

Wow.

Two men were talking together. The first challenged the other, “If you are so religious, let’s hear you quote the Lord’s Prayer. I bet you $10.00 you can’t.” The second responded, “Now I lay my down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep. And If I die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.” The first pulled out his wallet and fished out a ten dollar bill, muttering, “I didn’t think you could do it!”

Stuart Smalley (Voiceover): I deserve good things. I am entitled to my share of happiness. I refuse to beat myself up. I am attractive person. I am fun to be with.

Announcer: “Daily Affirmation with Stuart Smalley”. Stuart Smalley is a caring nurturer, a member of several 12-step programs, but not a licensed therapist.

[ open on Stuart giving himself a pep talk in his full-length mirror ]

Stuart Smalley: I’m going to do a terrific show today! And I’m gonna help people! Because I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and, doggonit, people like me!

—Comedian Al Franken

“Thank God there are those in the contemporary church who are determined at all costs to defend and uphold God’s revealed truth. But sometimes they are conspicuously lacking in love. When they think they smell heresy, their nose begins to twitch, their muscles ripple, and the light of battle enters their eye. They seem to enjoy nothing more than a fight. Others make the opposite mistake. They are determined at all costs to maintain and exhibit brotherly love, but in order to do so are prepared even to sacrifice the central truths of revelation. Both these tendencies are unbalanced and unbiblical. Truth becomes hard if it is not softened by love; love becomes soft if it is not strengthened by truth. The apostle [Paul] calls us to hold the two together, which should not be difficult for Spirit-filled believers, since the Holy Spirit is himself ”˜the Spirit of truth,’ and his firstfruit is ”˜love.’ There is no other route than this to a fully mature Christian unity.”

–John Stott, The Message of Ephesians (Downer’s Grove, Illinois: InterVarsityPress, 1979), p. 172

Former rock and roll bouncer and current host of Animal Planet’s, Emergency Vets: Interns, Kevin Fitzgerald tells a story here which is side splittingly funny. Listen to it all from Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me (go down to the “Not my Job” segment and begin just past 3 minutes in).

It looks fearsome.

The world is a dangerous place to live ”” not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don’t do anything about it.

–Albert Einstein

Greed is the logical result of the belief that there is no life after death. We grab what we can while we can however we can and then hold on to it hard.

–Sir Fred Catherwood, Evangelicals Now

HAMLIN, Pa. — Lightning can strike twice. Just ask Don Frick. Frick said he survived his second lightning strike Friday – 27 years to the day of his first – and emerged a bit shaken with only a burned zipper and a hole in the back of his jeans. “It burned my zipper off, burned my pockets, but didn’t burn me.”

“The gospel of grace begins and ends with forgiveness ”¦ grace is the only force in the universe powerful enough to break the chains that enslave generations. Grace alone melts ungrace.”

–Philip Yancey, quoted in this morning’s sermon

Watch the whole amazing video story (link accompanies the article).

“Urgency engulfs the manager; yet the most urgent task is not always the most important. The tyranny of the urgent lies in its distortion of priorities. One of the measures of a manager is the ability to distinguish the important from the urgent, to refuse to be tyrannize–d by the urgent, to refuse to manage by crisis.”

–R. Alec Mackenzie, also from this morning’s sermon

“He that is everywhere is nowhere.” ”” Thomas Fuller, 17th century historian, scholar, and author, also quoted in this morning’s sermon

Writer Charles Swindoll once found himself with too many commitments in too few days. He got nervous and tense about it. “I was snapping at my wife and our children, choking down my food at mealtimes, and feeling irritated at those unexpected interruptions through the day,” he recalled in his book Stress Fractures. “Before long, things around our home started reflecting the patter of my hurry-up style. It was becoming unbearable.
“I distinctly remember after supper one evening, the words of our younger daughter, Colleen. She wanted to tell me something important that had happened to her at school that day. She began hurriedly, ‘Daddy, I wanna tell you somethin’ and I’ll tell you really fast.’
“Suddenly realizing her frustration, I answered, ‘Honey, you can tell me — and you don’t have to tell me really fast. Say it slowly.” “I’ll never forget her answer: ‘Then listen slowly.'”

–From Bits & Pieces, June 24, 1993, and quoted in this morning’s sermon

Several commenters in Florida have asked us to post this reminder. So here you go, for those who are interested and can make it to Tallahassee on Saturday. (apologies for the incorrect information originally posted. We’ve corrected the info below.)

Funeral Service for Bishop Stephen Jecko

In Memoriam
Bishop Stephen Jecko
January 15, 1940 – June 7, 2007

A liturgy for The Burial of the Dead and Celebration of the Holy Eucharist in Thanksgiving for the life of The Right Reverend Stephen Hays Jecko will be offered on Saturday, July 14th at 2:00 pm. at St. Peter’s Anglican Church, Tallahassee. The Right Reverend Frank Cerveny and The Right Reverend John Howe, bishop of Central Florida will concelebrate and The Reverend Eric Dudley will be the preacher.

It is important to Joan Jecko that Bishop Jecko’s ashes come back to Florida for a special celebration with those who knew him well and loved him as our Bishop.

Because they were not able to have his ashes in Dallas, this will function not as a memorial service but as a funeral. A reception with the family will take place on the grounds of St. Peter’s immediately following the service.

St. Peter’s Anglican Church is located at 901 Thomasville Road , Tallahassee, Florida. For more information call St. Peter’s at 850-701-0664, or go to our website at www.saint-peters.net.

To see pictures of the “New 7 Wonders of the World” as chosen in an online poll which concluded over the weekend, go to this article at the BBC. No single winner is named, just the top 7 vote-getters.

But attending was not really about taking a peek at another school’s methods. “The fund­amental reason was that I wanted to have my own skills improved as a manager and leader,” Prof Francis says. “The course did what it said it would ”“ we were both impressed.

“The opportunity of talking about it with 89 other senior executives who have depth and experience is part of what you are paying for ”“ as is being led by someone who is highly experienced and can pull out all the nuances.”

Harvard, Prof Francis says, has developed and crystallised his thinking and given him greater confidence that his intuition about how and what to change were correct. “For me, one of the biggest, most striking insights is the importance of organisational culture. There was a phrase I found very striking, which Ford had pinned up in the boardroom: ”˜culture eats strategy for breakfast’. It means that you can strategise all you like but, if you have not got hearts and minds, it is a complete waste of time.”

–Professor Arthur Francis, Dean of Bradford University School of Management, in yesterday’s Financial Times, page 12

“All those vague theosophical minds for whom the universe is an immense melting pot are exactly the minds which shrink instinctively from that earthquake saying of our Gospels, which declare that the Son of God came not with peace but with a sundering sword.”

–G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy, chapter 8 (“The Romance of Orthodoxy”)