"Thought & Humor" has been read in all 50 States, 70 Countries, 7 Continents, many Island Nations, Oxford, Cambridge, every Ivy League School & all major American Universities including UNC!!!
I have no idea how I first ended up on your mailing list but I am sure glad you reached me! I would like to continue receiving your messages, so please sign me up on the new(?) list. Keep up the humor and the good work!
Best regards Karina L.,MD,PhD student
Dept.of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Lund University Hospital Center for Stem Cell Biology and Cell Therapy, Lund University Sweden
Sue Stottmeister was jogging through a park in Rockville, Maryland two weeks ago as she always did before picking up her children from school. But on this day she would not complete her run. Instead, the Sunday school teacher was attacked and brutally beaten.
When police found her, she had been lying in the snow for five hours. She died on the way to the hospital, leaving a grieving family and a shaken community.
Whenever something like this happens, people often wonder: Why does God allow evil to exist if he's able to stop it? It's a question that has caused many to doubt God's existence -- or his goodness, or his power. The problem of evil bothered journalist Lee Strobel so much that he researched and wrote a book to answer this and other hard questions about God.
Strobel was an atheist when he decided to examine the historical evidence for and against the existence of God. His journey led to his conversion and a vibrant faith in Christ. But Lee still struggled with questions that seemed to have no logical answer -- such as why a loving God would allow someone to murder a devoted Christian mother like Sue Stottmeister.
For the answer to the question of evil, Lee interviewed Christian philosopher Peter Kreeft of Boston College. Kreeft gave Strobel the traditional teaching regarding why evil is abroad in the world. Humans cannot enjoy both free will and a world free from sin. "Once God chose to create human beings with free will," Kreeft said, "it was up to them . . . as to whether there was sin or not." God created "the possibility of evil, but it was humans who actualized that potentiality."
Kreeft then offered Strobel a second explanation for the reality of evil. He suggested that God might tolerate certain short-range evils in order to achieve long-range goods that humans cannot foresee.
Imagine, he said, a bear in a trap, and a hunter who wants to liberate him. The hunter tries and fails to win the bear's confidence, so he has no choice but to shoot the bear full of tranquilizers. The terrified bear thinks the hunter is trying to kill him. He doesn't understand that the hunter is acting out of compassion.
"I believe," Kreeft said, "God does the same thing to us sometimes, and we can't comprehend why he does it any more than the bear can understand the motivations of the hunter." We simply have to trust God.
Finally, Kreeft concludes, people don't get away with evil acts, even though they may seem to. God will one day settle the accounts; evildoers will be punished for the suffering they've caused.
In the meantime, we must remember that God weeps with those who weep -- that his own son was acquainted with sorrows and grief. And he will help us to bear the agony of the world's evil.
I hope you'll read Lee Strobel's book, The Case for Faith. It will help you understand how God can meet our needs even in the midst of great suffering.
As Corrie ten Boom wrote of her time in a Nazi concentration camp, "No matter how deep our darkness, [God] is deeper still."
** During surgery he has to keep repeating that "thigh bone connected to the knee bone" song. ** The patient before you was a goat. ** The local bar association named him "client of the year." ** All his Medical books are from the Time-Life "Do-it-Yourself Series". ** Whenever he leaves the room his nurse makes duck noises. ** The 60 Minutes crew are hanging out in his waiting room. ** He asks you to turn your head and cough during an eye exam. ** He has an assistant named Igor. ** You can beat him in a game of Operation. ** He has an office sharing arrangement with a mortician.
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A Few Thoughts On Marriage
You know what I did before I married? Anything I wanted to. -- Henny Youngman
Keep your eyes wide open before marriage, half shut afterwards. --Benjamin Franklin
My wife and I were happy for twenty years. Then we met. -- Rodney Dangerfield
A good wife always forgives her husband when she's wrong. -- Milton Berle
I was married by a judge. I should have asked for a jury. -- George Burns
When women are depressed, they either eat or go shopping. Men invade another country. It's a whole different way of thinking. -- Elaine Boosler
Never go to bed mad. Stay up and fight.-- Phyllis Diller
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A UNC grad spent all day making his funny money. At the end of the day he realizes he spent all his time making $15 bills.
He figures that the only way he's going to get anything from this batch of money, is to find a place where the people aren't too bright and change his phony money for real cash.
He travels to a small town in the backwoods and walks into a small Mom and Pop grocery store. He goes to the old man behind the counter and asks him, "Do you have change for a $15 bill?"
The old man replies, "I sure do. How would you like that? An 8 and a 7 or two 6s and a three?"
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A note left for a pianist from his wife: "Gone Chopin, have Liszt, Bach in a Minuet."
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"How to Be Sure You're a REAL Christian" http://www.actsweb.org/htbs1.htm or 1-888-NEED-HIM (24/7 - free call)
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Our subtle senses of color and taste are the result of various combinations of a small number of "primary" senses. There are the sweet, sour, bitter, salty, and umami of taste, and the red, green, and blue of color. Are there "primary smells" too?
The sense of smell is far more complex than taste, but it too has primary senses. There are a lot more of them: several hundred, according to recent studies. Smell receptor cells come in many varieties, each of which responds to a small group of similar molecules.
When you smell the complex aroma of baking cookies or the subtle tang of seaweed decaying on the beach, your brain is recognizing a very complicated message composed of hundreds of distinct signals. Change just a few of those signals by a tiny amount, and you might realize that the cookies are beginning to burn. See info about the nose's Creator: PS 139:14.
How smell works: http://www.angelfire.com/ms/OzConnection/How.html
A school project on smell (for teachers and students): http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/chems.html
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One of the reasons for the success of the internet is its open, peer-to-peer nature. All computers on the internet are equal, and in the past it hasn't mattered whether your computer is a 386 in Nguru on the end of a satellite phone or a big monster in a New York rack. If that ever changes, I think we will lose part of the essential, vital character of the internet. Doug Winter
================== "How to Be Sure You're a REAL Christian" 1-888-NEED-HIM (24/7 - free call) ==================
What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his very soul? --Mark 8
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Dear Howdy,
I would like to continue receiving Thought & Humor. I have not received it in some time.
John F., MD Assistant professor Michigan State University Colleges of Medicine