From the Pastor’s Desk – April 2015

Dear Friends,
 
Richard Armour, in his delightful ARMOUR’S ALMANAC (McGraw-Hill, 1962), reminds us that the name of the month of April is thought to come from the Latin apeire, “to open’; since this is the season when buds, windows, and umbrellas begin to open.” Other of his April entries are just as informing —
 
April 10: “On this date in 1849, Walter Hut startled the world with the first safety pin.”
 
April 14: “President William Howard Taft inaugurated the annual custom of throwing out the first ball at the opening of the baseball season. Ever since, the ability to throw a baseball is one of the criteria for choosing a president—along with the ability to sign important documents with seventeen pens.”
 
April 29: “The all-purpose zipper was patented by Gideon Sundback, of Hoboken, New Jersey. He called it a ‘separable fastener’. Just what the inventor has been called by people with a stuck zipper and in a hurry — cannot be said here.”
 
I don’t know about you; but after the bone-chilling winds and rains of the past two months that were ‘Totally Winter’, I welcome a little bit of April foolishness to lighten up and thaw things out. So much so, that in the spirit of the thing, I here suggest a little mirth in our church routine for your consideration:
 
QUESTIONS FOR BIBLE STUDY
1. How many hours in the first day of Creation?
2. Whatever became of the leftover loaves and fishes from Jesus’ feeding of multitudes?
3. List in alphabetical order, aardvark to zygote, all the living things Noah had to take on the ark. Add them up and multiply by two. Well?
4. True or false: The epistles were the wives of the apostles.
 
PROVERBS SWORD DRILL
Where is it written:
1. Forbidden fruits make many jams.”
2. “Some people are like tea bags—they have to be put in hot water before you know how strong they are.”
3. “The trouble with life is, you are halfway through it before you realize it is a do-it-yourself kind of thing.”

Such funambulisms may seem to be irreverent and out-of-place in a Holy Season. However, I believe that this modicum of mirth is, in some sense, congenial to an episode in John’s Gospel where Thomas—the disciple from the Show-me-State—who, when the rest of the disciples had reported their seeing the risen Lord, must’ve wondered whether they were pulling his leg.

Cordially,
Bruce