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Got an Odd Job?

In case you missed this last  month… Do you have anunusual job? Tell us about it in 100 words or less, and you might appear in a future Banner. (We’re asking on this page since we know you’ll read it.) Please send your description to editorial@thebanner.org, with “Odd Jobs” in the subject line. Or mail it to “Odd Jobs,” The Banner, 2850 Kalamazoo Ave. SE, Grand Rapids, MI 49560. Thanks. And don’t forget we can always use more jokes.

The parents didn’t know what to do about the behavior of their two sons. They were at their wits’ end. Finally they asked their pastor to talk to the boys.

The pastor spoke with the younger brother first: “Think about God! Where is God?”

The boy said nothing. The pastor repeated the question in a stern voice. Again the little fellow said nothing. Frustrated, the pastor shook his finger at the boy, again asking, “Where is God?”

The boy bolted from the room. “What happened?” his older brother asked.

“We’re in big trouble now,” the boy said. “God is missing, and they think we did it!”

—Vernon Luchies,
reprinted with permission from Our Daily Bread, Nov. 3, 2005

A new business was opening, and one of the owner’s friends sent flowers for the
occasion. The flowers arrived with a card that read, “Rest in peace.”

Angered, the friend called the florist to complain. “I’m really sorry about the mistake,” the florist apologized. “But rather than getting angry, imagine this: somewhere there’s a funeral taking place with flowers bearing the note, ‘Congratulations on your new location.’”

—Gene Potoka
(from Mikey’s Funnies)

While listening to a song on a Christian radio station, my young children and I heard the refrain, “We are free, we are free, we are free!” My preschool daughter, Mathilde, exclaimed: “Mummy! Dat guy is saying, ‘We are free’!” 

Excited by her enthusiasm for the Lord, I launched into an explanation about what it means to be free in Christ. My monologue was met with silence. A bewildered Mathilde held up three fingers and said, “I am free.”

—Maria Steenepoorte

My mom was baby-sitting at my house while I worked. My 5-yea-rold son came to see her in the basement and confessed, “Grandma, I hit Maaike (his sister) because she hit me.”

”Jacob, you know you’re not supposed to do that,” Grandma admonished. He replied in all seriousness, “But I know a Christian song that says, ‘Do to others what you would have them do to you.’”

—Sonya Wonder

In 1951, during my seminary summer assignment in Granum, Alberta, my wife and I taught vacation Bible school. The lesson for the day was the parable of the lost son, which I described in rather great detail. I warned the kids I was going to quiz them afterward. On the test I asked, “What did the son do when all his money was gone?”

One 9-year-old answered, “He had to charge it.”

—Rev. John M. Hofman

Our new family activity last summer was canoeing. One evening as we enjoyed a smooth ride on a local lake, we decided to try to catch up to a mother duck and her ducklings. As we drew closer, the ducklings flapped their wings and seemed to run over the surface of the water. “Wow,” our 5-year-old son exclaimed, “They’re better than Jesus!”

—Jennifer Tuininga

The discussion on baptism was hot and heavy in the men’s society room.

Brother Van was defending “believers’ baptism,” because, he said, he couldn’t find a single text in the Bible advocating “infant baptism.”

Brother Robert was defending infant baptism.

The debate went back and forth without result.

Finally Brother Robert shouted, “I don’t care what you say, I think the Baptists are all wet!”

—Walter Vanderbeek

Sign in a church cry room:

“We shall not all sleep,

but we shall all be changed

in the twinkling of an eye.”

—Walter Vanderbeek