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Permission is hereby granted for you to change all
humor used in The"E-Mail Newspaper", 'Thought &
Humor" and its subsidiaries related to the institution
of lower learning hereby known as UNC to another
of your choice from the list below:

1) UT
2) Harvard or U.C.-Berkeley
3) Any accredited high school or middle school
4) Any Loggerheads & Pundits
5) Environmental Whackos
6) Moderates & Liberals (Lo, they are one & the same)
7) All paying ACLU members & officers
8) Members of NOW whose weight exceeds 190 lbs.
9) Any and all persnickety individuals
10) Any Chapel Hill, NC Citizen unless same sends an offspring
to Duke, NCSU, Wake Forest, Villanova, Miss. State or Villanova.

===============

One of the most endearing traits of children is their utter trust that their
parents will provide them with all of life's necessities, meaning food,
shelter, and a weekend at a theme park.

A theme park is a sort of ARTIFICIAL vacation, a place where you can enjoy
all your favorite pastimes at once, such as motion sickness and heat exhaustion.

Adult tolerance for theme parks peaks at about an hour, which is how long it
takes to walk from the parking lot to the front gate. You fork over an
obscene amount of money to gain entrance to a theme park, though it costs
nothing to leave (which is odd, because once you've been inside the walls
for a while, you'd pay anything to escape).

The two main activities in a theme park are (a) standing in line, and (b)
sweating. The sun reflects off the concrete with a fiendish lack of
mercy--you're about to learn the boiling point of tennis shoes. Your hair
is sunburned, and when a small child in front of you gestures with her hand
she smacks you in the face with her cotton candy; now it feels like your
cheeks are covered with carnivorous sand.

The ride your children have selected for you is a corkscrewing,
stomach-compressing roller coaster built by the same folks who manufactured
the baggage delivery system at the Denver International Airport. Apparently
the theme of this particular park is "Nausea." You sit down and are
strapped in so tightly you can feel your shoulders grinding against your pelvis.

Once the ride begins you are thrown about with such violence it reminds you
of your teenager's driving. When the ride is over your children want to get
something to eat, but first the ride attendants have to pry your fingers off
of the safety bar. "Open your eyes, please, sir," they keep shouting.

They finally convince you to let go, though it seems a bit discourteous of
them to have used pepper spray. Staggering, you follow your children to the
Hot Dog Palace for some breakfast.

Food at a theme park is so expensive it would be cheaper to just eat your
own money. Your son's meal costs a day's pay and consists of items
manufactured of corn syrup, which is sugar, sucrose, which is sugar,
fructose, which is sugar, and sugar, which is sugar. He also consumes large
quantities of what in dog food would be called "meat by-products." When,
after another couple of rides, he announces that he feels like he is going
to throw up, you're very alarmed--having seen his meal once, you're in no
mood to see it again.

With the exception of that first pummeling, you manage to stay off the rides
all day, explaining to your children that it isn't good for you when your
internal organs are forcibly rearranged. Now, though, they coax you back in
line, promising a ride that doesn't twist, doesn't hang you upside down like
a bat, doesn't cause your brain to flop around inside your skull--it just
goes up and then comes back down. That's it, Dad, no big deal.

What they don't tell you is HOW it comes back down. You're strapped into a
seat and pulled gently up into acrophobia, the city falling away from you.
Okay, not so bad, and in the conversation you're having with God you explain
that you're thankful for the wonderful view but you really would like to get
down now.

And that's just how you descend: NOW. Without warning, you plummet to the
ground in an uncontrolled free fall. You must be moving faster than the
speed of sound because when you open your mouth, nothing comes out. Your
life passes before your eyes, and your one regret is that you will not have
an opportunity to punish your children for bringing you to this hellish place.

Brakes cut in and you slam to a stop. You gingerly touch your face to
confirm it has fallen off. "Wasn't that fun, dad?" your kids ask. "Why are
you kissing the ground?"

At the end of the day, you let your teenager drive home. (After the theme
park, you are impervious to fear.)
W. Bruce Cameron
[ www.wbrucecameron.com ]

===============




C.S. Lewis, in one little episode from his book The Silver Chair
illustrates God’s invitation and our resistance. Aslan, the lion is
representative of Christ and Jill one of us.

This is the first time they meet. Listen:

When Jill stopped, she found she was dreadfully thirsty… She listened
carefully and felt almost sure she heard the sound of running water.
Jill…looked around her very carefully. There was no sign of the Lion; so
she plucked up her courage to… look for that running water.
…she came to an open glade and saw the stream, bright as glass… [A]lthough
the sight of the water made her feel ten times thirstier than before, she
didn’t rush forward and drink. She stood still as if she had been turned
into a stone, with her mouth wide open. And she had a very good reason:
just this side of the stream lay the Lion…
“Are you not thirsty?” said the Lion.
“I’m dying of thirst,” said Jill.
“Then drink,” said the Lion.
“May I—could I—would you mind going away while I do?” said Jill.
The Lion answered this only by a look and a very low growl. And as Jill
gazed at its motionless bulk, she realized that she might as well have
asked the whole mountain to move aside for her convenience.
The delicious rippling noise of the stream was driving her nearly frantic.
“Will you promise not to—do anything to me, if I do come?” said Jill.
“I make no promise,” said the Lion.
Jill was so thirsty now that, without noticing it, she had come a step
nearer.
“Do you eat girls?” she said.
“I have swallowed up girls and boys, women and men, kings and emperors,
cities and realms,” said the Lion.
“I daren’t come and drink,” said Jill.
“Then you will die of thirst,” said the Lion.
“Oh dear!” said Jill, coming another step nearer. “I suppose I must go and
look for another stream then.”
“There is no other stream,” said the Lion.

What a powerful illustration this is. We thirst for God. Christ invites
us to come and be filled by Him. Yet, fearful of the risk we turn away
from Him, still thirsty.

GK Chesterton said it well: Faith and love are apt to be spasmodic in the
best of minds. Men and women live on the brink of mysteries and harmonies
into which they never enter and with their hand on the doorlatch they die
outside. Ravi Zacharias
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