Two Short Ones

1) GRINDING THE AXE WHEN THE STONE IS DONE SPINNING - one-liner
When all is said and done, too many people keep on saying and doing.

SOURCE: Unknown

2) HARMONY OF MINDS - quote, but whose?
Peter tells us as Christians to be in harmony with one another. Unloving dissension is far from harmony. Actually, it is closer to someone dragging their fingernails down a blackboard.

SOURCE: Unknown

1) EVERY LITTLE HELPS - a "little" story
A man by the name of Little lived in a little house in a little town, and he worked for a very little salary. The neighbors wondered how Mr. Little and the whole Little family could get along on so little salary. He was asked, “Mr. Little, how do you and Mrs. Little and the seven little Littles get along on such a little salary?”

He replied, “Every Little helps.”

COMMENT: How blessed a church, where everyone offers what they can to spread the Gospel and be a blessing to the community! But we aren't little. We have the Lord on our side to bless us all the more in our 'little' efforts.

2) FLYING PROFILE - news article
(New York) Hoping to ease the nightmare of flying next to a crashing bore, a company in New York will match like-minded passengers to help make the time fly.

…“It is for anyone who travels who does not want to have to deal with the psychological hell of sitting 2 inches from someone you don’t know for eight hours,” he [Peter Shankman founder of AirTroductions] said.

To use AirTroductions, travelers register online, listing personal details in a profile. When they post their traveling itineraries, the registry provides information on other people taking the same flights.

…The system allows passengers to note if what they really desire is a seatmate who will leave them alone.

SOURCE: Wulfhorst, Ellen. Hello there… You come here often?
January 30, 2006. Reuters – Oddly Enough

COMMENT: Sorry, in the church you don’t base who you share your pew with on compatibility profiles. We’re different for a reason. God uses our differences for our benefit.

1) COMPLIMENTING A FRIENDSHIP - short story
The greatest compliment anyone ever paid our friendship, I think, was in the second grade, when Miss Hipsure (spelling? – audio book) moved us apart… She told us that we were never going to learn anything if we sat next to each other and talked all day…

What a great thing for a person to notice about a friendship! What better testament than that? “You two are such good friends that I have to move you apart.”

SOURCE: Greene, Bob. And You Know You Should Be Glad:
A True Story of Friendship. Chap. 3

COMMENT: When we really share in a strong Christian friendship, the devil will try to split us up. Maybe we should look at disagreements that way: Wow, we must be really close, because there is an effort out there to make us enemies.

2) DIVERSITY VS. ONE-MINDEDNESS OF FAITH - quote
“We are a community that really encourages diversity among our members, but the church has taken a stand to be welcoming of gay and lesbian persons. Because this particular issue has been so identified with ‘Christian’ values and so many churches have poured lots of money and effort to block gay marriage, we chose to make a public statement that there’s not one Christian view on this,” [Rev. Liz Oettinger, pastor of the First Congregational Church] said.

SOURCE: Reeves, Carol. Voting religious values
October 4, 2004. Corvallis Gazette-Times

COMMENT: So much for being one in mind as far as God’s Word is concerned.

New Subtopic!

1) ANTS FORM SUPERCOLONY - news article (good for an illustration)
(Melbourne, Australia) A huge ant colony measuring 100 kilometres (62 miles) across has been found under the southern Australian city of Melbourne. Monash University researcher Elissa Suhr said [concerning the] supercolony of Argentine ants:… [their] natural aggression kept numbers under control in its native country but the genetic make-up of the ants found in Australia had mutated allowing them to cooperate to build the supercolony. “When they arrived in Australia, a change in their structure occurred, changing their behaviour so that they are not aggressive towards one another. This has resulted in the colonies becoming one supercolony.”

SOURCE: Giant mutant ant colony found in Australia
August 12, 2004. AFP (Agence France Presse) – Science

COMMENT: Sometimes the church doesn’t grow because it is too caught up on internal fighting

2) BROTHERS, NOT GENERALS - news article (good for an illustration)
The training is dramatically different from the old Iraqi model in one key way. Even though about half of the counterterrorist unit members served in Iraq’s military, they were not prepared for the commando structure, where each man must think for himself. An Iraqi captain, who fought the marines outside Kut, says, “We have learned to work as brothers and not call each other by ranks.”

SOURCE: Robinson, Linda. A few good men
February 5, 2005. U.S. News & World Report

COMMENTS: Though there are different roles within the church, we are each brothers and sisters in the faith, working together.

Last one from this group

quote
[The] demand for public prayer with errorists and heretics is a characteristic of the Reformed, but is foreign to the true Lutheran church.

SOURCE: 1908. Lutheraner (LCMS publication), p. 111
cited in: “Fellowship Then and Now,” Essays, p 376
cited by: Brug, John F. The Synodical Conference and Prayer Fellowship, pg. 37
Winter, 2005. Wisconsin Lutheran Quarterly, Vol. 102, No. 1

COMMENT: It seems that attitudes have changed, considering that the president of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod just participated in a ecumenical service with the pope. The papacy still denies that we are saved by grace without works.