Pastor Dan Betzer tells the story …
A little boy is trying to sell an old push-style lawn mower.
A preacher stops by to check it out. The pastor pulls on the cord to start it. No luck. He pulls and he pulls and he pulls.
Pastor Dan Betzer tells the story …
A little boy is trying to sell an old push-style lawn mower.
A preacher stops by to check it out. The pastor pulls on the cord to start it. No luck. He pulls and he pulls and he pulls.
When I got out of college, I worked a while for a small town newspaper. The county authorities wanted to build a new jail since ours had been built around the turn of the century.
I got the job of writing an article that would tilt taxpayers towards supporting a new jail.
So I visited the local hoosgow and found it a pretty bleak place. I noticed that someone had scrawled in the plaster of one wall, “Otis was here.” Otis was one of the policemen of our small town. I didn’t know if it was him or Otis of Andy of Mayberry.
Jailhouse humor.
If I didn’t have the conviction before, I knew for sure after that visit, that I only wanted to see that sad place and not be locked up there. I seemed to remember that our photographer took my picture staring out between the bars. I wish I still had it. My grandkids would be impressed.
My Time In Jail
You know what, though? I’ve been there in life; I’ve gotten so mad about some things that when I finally wised up and tried to escape my anger, I couldn’t do it.
I was in anger jail. Continue reading
Have you ever met someone who has the ability to make you roaring mad? The other day it happened to me and I’ll admit it caught me by surprise..
I’m not known as an angry person. At the beginning of our relationship, after Phyllis and I had been going together for several months, she said to me, “What does it take to make you mad? I’ve never seen you mad.”
She’s hasn’t said that for 44 years. She found the secret. (Actually, we’re always on our good behavior until we get the girl, isn’t that right guys?”)
Well, the other day I was talking to this lady on the phone. She works in an administrative office here in Saint Maur. She was telling me that a paper that I had sent her wouldn’t work. I told her that I didn’t have the paper she was looking for because someone in another administrative position had told me to do something else, which I had obediently done.
So, I was right.
But, she was convinced that she was right. It actually turned out that the other administrative person hadn’t counseled me correctly. I was right in my heart because I had done what the authorities said.
She could care less that I was right in my heart. That wasn’t her problem. Her problem was that the “i’s” weren’t dotted and the “t’s” weren’t crossed.
No matter that this was going to cause me some headaches.
The tone amped up a bit on one end of the phone, then on the other, then on the other again. At the last I was ready to throw the phone against the wall (I didn’t).
We ended the conversation on a frosty note.
For the next hour I replayed that conversation over and over again. I told her ‘how it was » in the imaginary cat fight we had. Of course she couldn’t hear me, which was probably fortunate. I wondered how someone so obtuse could land in a position like that, etc. Continue reading
Sometimes the conviction that you are “right!” makes you look pretty silly.
Once in Luxembourg we went to McDonald’s after the afternoon church service. As we crossed the parking lot, there was a man standing near the entrance with a small child next to him. The man was yelling.
“Don’t go in there. These people lie. They promise you toys, then they say that they don’t have it!” Evidently he was mad because Old Mickey D had promised something for the kids and they said they didn’t have any more in stock. I suppose he was convinced they did. Continue reading