Malankara World Journal

Volume 1 No. 41 December 1, 2011

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If I go up to the heavens, you are there; If I make my bed in the depths, you are there. If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, Even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast. Psalm 139:8-10

Table of Contents

Editor's Note

Bible Readings for This Sunday

Sermons for This Sunday

Inspiration: God's Grace is a Bridge that God's Faithfulness Travels on!

Featured This Week: Preparing for The Visit of the Incarnate God

The Music of Christmas

Book Excerpt: In the School of Prayer - Lesson: 15: The Power of United Prayer

Prayer that Pleases Him

The Discipline of Going to Church

Calming Quarrels in your Marriage

Recipe: Mixing is More Important Than Baking in Christmas Cake Recipes

Humor: Guilt

About Malankara World

Editor's Note

Bible Readings for This Sunday (Dec 4)

Birth of John the Baptist

• Evening
  • St. Mark 10 : 13-16
• Morning
  • St. Matthew 11: 11-19
• Before Holy Qurbana
  • Genesis 21: 1-21
  • Exodus 2:1-10
  • 1 Samuel 1 : 20-28 , 2 : 18 -26
  • Psalms 127 : 1 -5
  • Isaiah 62: 1-12
• Holy Qurbana
  • I John 3:1-3
  • Ephesians 6: 1-4;
  • Colosians 3: 20-21
  • St. Luke 1:57-80

Lectionary of the Syrian Orthodox Church
http://www.MalankaraWorld.com/Library/Lectionary/Lec_Koodosh-eetho-to-Kothne.htm

Sermons for This Sunday (Dec 4)

Birth of John the Baptist: John the Forerunner
by Father Mead, New York

"And thou, child, shalt be called the Prophet of the Highest; for thou shalt go before the face of the Lord to prepare his way."

Gospel Reading: St. Luke 1:57-80

Over the ages, God had an extraordinary way of working through these sorts of unusual circumstances to advance his purposes. Think of Abraham and Sarah, of Samson's parents, of Samuel’s mother; or, for that matter, of the harlot Rahab, the Moabite Ruth, or even King David's wife Bathsheba and their son Solomon. A different kind of king was about to be conceived and born (on Christmas Day); and his still unborn yet already named cousin, John, his prophetic forerunner, was well on the way when angel Gabriel announced to St. Mary about the incarnation of Messiah.

Mary, two months after the annunciation, went to visit Elizabeth. On that occasion, John, less than one month away from birth, leaped in the womb of his mother, who interpreted it as a salute at the approach of Mary and her child. "How is this granted me," exclaimed Elizabeth, "that the mother of my Lord should come to me!"

Elizabeth’s husband Zechariah was slower than his wife to sense the presence of the Lord. It is worth noting that Zechariah was a priest who took his rounds at the Jerusalem Temple. Perhaps he was afflicted with the familiar problem of clergy burnout. In any case, he didn't believe the Angel Gabriel: "How shall I know this? For I am an old man, and my wife is advanced in years?" The messenger answered: "I am Gabriel, who stand in presence of God, and I was sent to speak to you to bring you this good news. And behold you shall be unable to speak until this comes to pass." Imagine a priest unable to speak for nine months. Zechariah sounds a little like that other religious leader, Nicodemus, who visited Jesus by night and asked, "How can a man be born again; can he enter his mother’s womb a second time?"

Nicodemus came around in the end, and so did poor old Zechariah, as we saw in today's Gospel which tells of the Nativity of Saint John the Baptist. When Elizabeth, faithful as ever, resisted the gathered people and insisted that the newborn boy's name be John rather than Zechariah Junior; and when the crowd made signs to the father, Zechariah wrote, "His name is John": Whereupon the father's tongue was loosed, and he sang one of the Church’s most beautiful canticles. The Song of Zechariah, the Benedictus Dominus Deus, has occupied a prominent position in Christian worship since at least a millennium and a half ago.

Zechariah's song is about freedom, freedom to worship God without fear. It is about release, not just from external enemies, but even more, from our internal, and therefore also eternal, enemies: bondage to sin, violence and death. Saint Luke means for us to see that just as old Zechariah was given freedom of speech at the birth of his son whom he obediently named John, so the way is prepared for the rest of us to receive the freedom of the Gospel.

John the Baptist, with his austere, simple message of repentance, shows the way forward. Turn to God; break away from your sins, and bear fruit that shows a new mind and heart. For what, we may ask; what then? For the coming of the Redeemer Jesus Christ, for the birth of the Messiah, not only into human history but into our hearts.

Jesus Christ is a Messiah who is not so much a political deliverer as he is a liberator from the deepest enemies of human life: sin, violence and death; although throughout history, the liberation of the Gospel has led to political justice and freedom as well. John leaped in his mother's womb at this Messiah’s approach. John baptized Jesus thirty years later and said he was not worthy to untie his sandal. But John himself had to struggle with doubt over whether such a figure as Jesus, such a Lamb of God, was really the one he was expecting. Or should he look for another? No, Jesus was the one for whom John was the forerunner. As Zechariah prophesied, "Thou shalt go before the face of the Lord to prepare his ways…to give light to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, and to guide our feet into the way of peace."

A famous crucifixion painting by sixteenth century artist Matthias Grunewald depicts the Messiah dying a most horrible death, a death that burns away any sentimentality about our Savior. But next to this ghastly scene is, of all people, John the Baptist, pointing his finger at the crucified Lord, holding the writings of the prophets in his other hand. The artist has it right, as did John when he leaped in his mother's womb at the approach of pregnant Mary. Jesus is the one. Behold the Lamb of God! Christ's crucifixion, which silences all of us, just as the first notice of Christ's forerunner silenced old Zechariah, is the very thing which gives us freedom to live, to pray, and to sing God's praises.

In the Name of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost. Amen.

[Editor's Note: This is an excerpted and edited version of Homily by Fr. Mead, © 2007–2011 Saint Thomas Church, NY.]

More homilies, sermons, bible commentaries and analyses are available in Malankara World. Please check them out.
Sermons and Bible Commentaries on the Sunday of the Birth of John the Baptist

http://MalankaraWorld.com/Library/Sermons/Sermon-of-the-week_birth-of-John-the-Baptist.htm

More Sermons

This Week's Features

Key Scripture: Luke 1:57-80

St. Luke shows us that even righteous people can learn more about God’s grace through hard times and still be instruments, testimonies of His faithfulness. In this section of the gospel of Luke God’s plan is fulfilled, John is born of a barren older woman and a man who is righteous and who doubts loses his ability to speak and learned from his mistake. God’s faithfulness is that John is born and born to be the forerunner to the messiah and another demonstration of God’s grace and faithfulness.

Dr. Bock in his commentary on the Gospel of Luke points out some key parts of this story.

1."When God acts we should listen. Zechariah could not believe so God gave him time to reflect. Can I ask you a question; how many times have you struggled with something, some challenge, obstacle and not realized that maybe it was a time to reflect on God’s faithfulness or plan and or grace?

2.At the end of the reflection Zechariah is reminded that God does what he says! Remember we where told earlier, vs. 6 Zechariah and Elizabeth are upright in the sight of God and observing all the Lord’s commandments and regulations blamelessly.

3.It also shows from the Zechariah has learned from his mistake, through the pain of discipline, he Zechariah emerges a stronger man of God. Dr. Bock points out that “those who are arrogant, thinking they know it all, have no need for God or for instruction – Zechariah is not an arrogant man."

Featured This Week: Preparing for The Visit of the Incarnate God

Zechariah is singing about a divine visit of momentous proportion--a visit his son, John, will prepare the world to receive in the right way. The Greek word he uses is loaded with grace. This same word was used at other times to describe the way someone might visit a lonely person or a widow in distress. This is a healing kind of visit, in other words. This is a type of visit motivated by an awareness that someone is hurting, and so you want to see if you can help.

God is visiting this world with a deep-seated desire to help. But are we ready to receive this visit in the right way? Because no matter how well-motivated a given visit may be, the person receiving it needs to be in the right frame of mind.

...Over the centuries, even the church has allowed the message of Advent to become mostly about joy at the expense of any talk of judgment. In Zechariah's song there is a lot of talk about salvation but there is also some talk about punishment for God's enemies. We may sing "Joy the world, the Lord is come," but we need to face up to the fact that there are any number of people in this world who actually find no joy at all in the Christian message. They hate it. And they don't want this Jesus to be called their "Lord" in any sense.

That's why all four gospels talk about John the Baptist and his fiery message of repentance. Two of the four gospels do not mention Jesus' birth at all. But Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John all recognized that no gospel would be complete without John the Baptist. A gospel may skip Christmas but it may not skip John. Why? Because as Zechariah knew already when John was just eight days old, John was going to be the necessary advance man to get the world ready to receive Jesus.

If Jesus was the one who would plant the mustard seed of the kingdom into the soil of this world, then John was to be the one who did the hard work of plowing the soil to get ready for that planting. John would be the one who would sink down his plow blade into human hearts that were the spiritual equivalent of a parched field whose dirt had long ago hardened into something resembling concrete. If Jesus was God's divine Visitor to this world, then John was the one who was sent to prepare the way.

Because God knew and John the Baptist knew that how the forthcoming visit of God's Son would be received would very much depend on people's situation. If they were eager to hear the good news that God's tender mercies were available to forgive their sins, then they'd be glad to hear just that message from the lips of Jesus. But if people didn't think they had a problem with sin, then the visit of God's Son would be merely annoying and a waste of their time.

...Yet John the Baptist exists as the gospel's necessary Advent pre-cursor precisely to confront us, to bring us into conflict with our own selves, to clench our teeth a bit so that we just maybe can repent, can change our lives and center ourselves on the holiness of God that invaded the world when Jesus visited this planet.

Commentators note that beautiful as Zechariah's song is, in a way it provides a kind of pause--almost an interruption--in the narrative flow of Luke. After all, just look what comes next in chapter 2: the most famous version of the Christmas story! This is what we are all so eager to get to this month--indeed, the Christmas season keeps getting longer as retailers and even we ourselves begin decking things out for Christmas well before Thanksgiving even arrives. We can't wait to jump into Luke 2 to see again that manger, that baby, those shepherds, and the angels dancing in the night sky.

But Luke forces us to pause. Just before Zechariah's song, everyone was asking a question we too seldom ask in Advent: What's going on here? What does this all really mean? Zechariah's song is, in part, an answer to that question as Zechariah weaves together a rich tapestry of biblical images, including God's covenant with Abraham, the exodus from Egypt, the stories of King David as well as rich imagery like the rising sun from heaven and the path of peace. The story told in Luke 2 is beautiful, vital, and worthy of our celebration. But we won't be ready for the visit of that Christ Child until we take a cue from Luke and so pause, take time for a few deep and reflective breaths, and so ponder the message John the Baptist must bring to us first.

[Editor's Note: This is an edited and excerpted version of the sermon by Scott Hoezee titled 'The Visit: A Sermon Based on Luke 1:57-80.' Full version of the sermon can be read in  Malankara World at:
http://www.Malankaraworld.com/Library/Sermons/Sermons_birth-of-John-the-Baptist-Visit-Hoezee.htm ]

Prayer that Pleases Him

by Greg Laurie

Now this is the confidence that we have in Him, that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. —1 John 5:14

Nothing lies outside of the reach of prayer except that which is outside of the will of God. God answers the requests that He inspires. Thus, we need a good working knowledge of Scripture.

So when I pray for provision, I might say, "Lord, You have told us in Your Word that You will supply all of our needs according to Your riches and glory in Christ Jesus. . . ." (see Philippians 4:19.) Am I saying this to educate God, as though He would say, "Well, I didn’t know that! That is good stuff"? No. I am reminding myself of what the Bible says. And I am basing my prayer request on a promise of Scripture. It also bolsters my faith, because I am asking God to answer a prayer in which I have quoted Scripture.

The apostles quoted Scripture when they prayed: "Lord, You are God, who made heaven and earth and the sea, and all that is in them, who by the mouth of Your servant David have said: ‘Why did the nations rage, and the people plot vain things? . . .’ " (Acts 4:25–26).

Jesus said, "If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, you will ask what you desire, and it shall be done for you" (John 15:7). Another way to translate this would be, "If you maintain a living communion with Me, and My words are at home in you, you shall ask at once for yourself whatever your heart desires, and it will be yours."

God is not a genie who will answer every request we make. But God will answer our prayers if we are maintaining a living communion with Him and His Word is at home in us—because we will be asking what He wants us to ask for.

Summary sentence: Is God’s Word abiding in you when you pray?

Source: Harvest Devotional; Copyright © 2011 by Harvest Ministries. All rights reserved.

The Discipline of Going to Church

by Daniel Darling

Going to church can become routine. I know it, because I grew up going to church three times a week (at least). It was not a choice my parents gave me. It was something we did, part of our regular routine.

As a second-generation Christian, I know full well the dangers of making spirituality overly routine. I have experienced long stretches of dryness where I was "going through the motions" and filling a pew. This can be dangerous to spiritual health. Traditionalism can become legalism. We can be satisfied with doing what we are supposed to do and avoiding spiritual introspection and growth.

However, I have come to appreciate the discipline of merely going to church. I used to say that "you shouldn't just go to church to go to church." But I've reconsidered this. The discipline of going to church every week for the majority of your life is in itself an act of worship, of sacrifice. You're saying to yourself and to the world that assembling with the called-out people of God, that the story of Christianity, the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus matters so much that you're willing to dedicate at least one day a week to it.

I'm glad, for instance, that my father and mother made us go to church every week, three times a week. My father, by this kind of leadership, demonstrated to me that faithfulness to the local body of Christ was paramount. By going to church every week we presented our bodies as a "living sacrifice" by getting up, dressing up, getting in the car and going to church. In the eyes of those who watched our family, we "voted" to make God a priority by committing ourselves to church.

I think I understand this more keenly now that I'm a pastor myself. Every week a pastor wonders who will show up. There are those who consider church a nice and viable option on Sunday and there are those who consider it a priority.

To be sure, faithful attendance shouldn't be all we achieve. We should seek to serve our fellow brothers and sisters. We should come to worship God. We should come to hear the food of the Word of God. But its the very discipline of going to church that sets the stage for those things to happen, for God to work powerfully in our hearts.

Sometimes we eschew discipline because it smacks of legalism. We speak of Christianity as "rules" versus "relationship." And this is true and right. But the spiritual disciplines (such as attending church with God's call-out community) bring us closer to Christ, whose power can change us.

Year after year I attended church with my parents. There were many seasons where I went for wrong reasons (I had to go, I liked the social life). But two things happened when I went to church even on days I didn't really want to go. First, I was building into my life a habit, a discipline that would put me in the place where God works, in the midst of His church. Secondly, there were times I dragged myself to church only to hear a life-changing message.

So, its a good idea to make a commitment to be in church every single week. You'll be surprised at how this discipline will be a benefit to your life.

Source: Live It Devotional

Calming Quarrels in your Marriage

by Eric and April Motl

What’s the number one thing that stirs up a conflict in your home? Money? The Kids? Schedules? The remote control?

Disagreements are a natural part of marriage - no two people can see the world exactly the same 100% of the time. Disagreements can even be good when we go about them in a healthy way. But fighting? That is an entirely different matter.

Before my husband and I got married, he told me that married couples didn’t have to fight. I told him he was living in “lala land” and that all married people fight. I thought it worked like gravity - you get married, you fight. As if you are all the sudden transported from your wedding reception into some kind of metaphorical boxing ring. Thankfully, through some solid discipleship and growing in the Lord, I discovered that marriage could hold a deep sweetness that came without destructive fighting.

While fighting and marriage appear to go hand-in-hand, they weren’t designed to! The status of the conflicts in your home deeply matters to God. Let’s read what He has to say about it in the book of James.

1. Own the cause of your quarrels!

What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? You desire but do not have, so you kill. You covet but you cannot get what you want, so you quarrel and fight. You do not have because you do not ask God. When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures. James 4:1-3 NIV

The word wrong motivesin the original Greek means brokenness andsickness. All of us have brokenness in us; the spiritual fallen nature we are all born with, and also the individual sicknesses we personally carry. In your marriage, check carefully how your brokenness and desires (desires to be “right” or to have your own way, or to feel in control) are affecting the conflicts your are experiencing. If you have a long standing habit or some damaging pattern (like anger or alcoholism) that was passed from generation to generation, get on your knees and beg for God’s grace and help! There is nothing in you that is “just that way” or can’t change if you allow God into it.

2. Recognize the consequences of your fighting

It’s easy to consider fighting to be a “little” sin in a world where sexual immorality and violence run rampant. But perhaps God doesn’t see it that way.

You adulterous people, don’t you know that friendship with the world means enmity against God? Therefore, anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God. Or do you think Scripture says without reason that he jealously longs for the spirit he has caused to dwell in us. James 4:4-5 NIV

Seems like James changed the subject from fighting to being worldly, but did he really? Or isn’t fighting an attitude that comes from worldly thinking? Earlier in the same letter, James tells us that the wisdom from God is peaceable and that wisdom from the world causes disorder (James 3:14-18).

It is the world that tells us we deserve respect and it is Jesus that says turn the other cheek (Matthew 5:39). It is the world that tells us revenge is good, while Jesus tells us to bless and pray for those who persecute us and speak evil against us (Luke 6:28).

Fighting is aligning our hearts and minds with the ways of the world, and when do that, we have positioned ourselves as spiritual 'cheaters' or adulteresses to our Christianity. That is a pretty hefty consequence. Not only do we position ourselves as enemies of Christ, but we also grieve the Holy Spirit. James isn't the only passage that mentions how we grieve God through our words; Ephesians 4:29-30 says that words which do not bless those listening grieve God.

3. Seek out Biblical cures for your quarrels. Here’s some that James lists for us:

But he gives us more grace. That is why Scripture says: "God opposes the proud but shows favor to the humble." James 4:6 NIV

• Humility. Maintain an attitude of personal humility when disagreements arise.

Submit yourself to God. James 4:7

• Maintain a heart of submission to the Lord by leaning into the Holy Spirit for guidance (including correction) when disagreements arise.

Resist the devil and he will flee from you. James 4:7

• Be aware of the enemy’s schemes when you enter a disagreement. Ever watched a disagreement spiral into something that you never imagined? Scripture warns that the enemy roams about like a lion, seeking those he may devour (1 Peter 5:8). Predators always look for the weakling at the end of the pack. In our spiritual lives, the enemy looks for the doors and windows that are loose, broken or weak. Fighting, anger (Ephesians 4:26-27) and unforgiveness (2 Corinthians 2:10-11) are all relationship issues that fly red signal flags catching the enemy’s attention.

Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. James 4:8a

• Draw near to God. If it is possible (as in, if both you and your spouse are believers), for the two of you to draw near to the Lord through prayer before or during a disagreement then do it! Inviting the Lord into any and every situation you face is always a good idea.

Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up. James 4:8b-10 NIV

• Clean up! When you come face to face with the reality of your brokenness, like we mentioned earlier, the only way to move forward in freedom is to confess it and then turn from it. Don’t be afraid to get on your knees individually or as a couple and ask for the Lord’s forgiveness and grace. And when you do find that an argument escalated to the point of hurting one another and sinning against the Lord, then mourn your mistake with true repentance so that the Lord might bring healing and joy to the very place of pain in your marriage. Too often we nurse grudges and anger after arguments, instead of allowing ourselves to just simply be broken before the Lord. He usually doesn’t come in and fix what we don’t admit is broken. But the healing He can work between two people who are willing to surrender their issues with honesty before Him is nothing short of miraculous!

Next time you come to an impasse in your marriage, run through these five steps and wait to see what the Lord will do. Waiting is a key element to humbling yourself before the Lord because the work is done in His timing and His way instead of you taking charge of things and doing them your way and in your time. There have been seasons when I struggled with something Eric was doing and could only submit my feelings to the Lord’s care; no amount of talking would change his mind. Eventually the Lord grew both of us through the process of praying and waiting. And can you imagine it, but he has even had to do the same for me! (Wink, wink!)

May God’s grace cover your marriage as you seek to honor the Lord in the way you handle conflicts in your home!

[April Motl is the founder of In His Eyes Ministries; a teaching ministry devoted to helping women see their life from God’s perspective. For more information about the ministry visit www.InHisEyesMinistries.com.]

Source: Live It Devotional

Recipe: Mixing is More Important Than Baking in Christmas Cake Recipes

by: Chef Todd Mohr

Have you ever taken the results of your family’s Christmas cake recipe out of the oven and been disappointed? How can the same recipe created year after year always come out differently? “Why didn’t my cake BAKE correctly?”

I’m here to tell you that the problem with most home baking mistakes isn’t in the BAKING, it’s in the MIXING of your cakes that most mistakes are made.

There are three goals in cake mixing, whether it’s a Christmas cake recipe, or any other baked good at any time of the year.

The first goal in cake mixing is to combine all the ingredients into a uniform batter. This may seem obvious, but when you don’t scrape the mixing bowl during the process you can have streaks of dry flour in your batter. If you haven’t incorporated eggs in the precise way to get the best emulsification, then how you BAKE the item really won’t matter.

The second goal is to trap as much air as possible. This is most often overlooked by the home cake baker. When creaming fat and sugar together, or whipping egg whites, the idea is to gather as much trapped air to give the cake a light texture and even crumb. This is accomplished through concerted MIXING, not BAKING.

Lastly, ingredients for your birthday cake or Christmas cake recipe are mixed properly to develop the structure of the cake. How wet and dry ingredients are added during mixing are the building blocks of a cake that is either sunken or bursting from the pan.

With those universal cake mixing goals in mind, now you can have ultimate power over any written cake instructions. However, while all mixing methods have the same goal, they have different procedures depending on the ratio of ingredients. This yields five basic types of cake.

All cakes are defined by their mixing methods, and broken into two categories; high-fat cakes and low-fat cakes.

High fat cakes are almost always mixed using the 'creaming method'. The best cookies from scratch are also made with a creaming method. This is the procedure where butter and sugar are creamed together to incorporate air. Remember? Trap Air? Here’s where it happens, and why it’s important to use room-temperature ingredients.

A 'Two-Stage Method' cake uses egg whites that have been whipped to soft peaks. If you notice how the volume of egg whites increases dramatically when you whip them, you’re witnessing the incorporation of AIR into your batter. A batter of egg yolks, oil, water, and seasonings are added to the whites, along with two stages of alternating flour and liquid, thus the two-stage method.

Low-Fat cakes most often use an egg foam for structure and texture of the cakes. The first type of low-fat cake mixing method is a Sponge Cake. Whipped yolks and whites give solid structure and flavor to a sponge cake, again proving that the mixing methods are most important if you want your Christmas cake recipe to be the best it can be.

Angel food cakes are absolutely fat-free because they're made entirely of egg whites, sugar, flour, and flavorings. But again, HOW you whip the egg whites for an angel food method will mean the difference between a dense, chewy cake, or light, fluffy Angel Food cake.

Chiffon Cakes are lower fat cakes that use the same method as angel food, but also include some egg yolks to give better structure, and use chemical leavening agents like baking powder or baking soda for extra rise.

Grandma’s Christmas cake recipe might make a comeback this year when you apply the basic mixing methods outlined here. Once you identify HOW Grandma was mixing her cakes, you can assure that you’re meeting the general goals of cake mixing; combine ingredients, trap air, and develop structure.

Stop blaming your oven for those cakes not BAKING correctly. You have no control over what happens to the cake once you shut the oven door. However, you have a tremendous amount of control over the MIXING of your cakes, and it is the most important skill to have when creating your own Christmas cake recipe.

About The Author

Chef Todd Mohr has freed thousands of people from the frustration of written recipes with his online cooking classes. The Chef’s cooking DVD series 'Burn Your Recipes' empowers people to cook with basic methods and the ingredients they desire.

More Recipes/ Cooking Tips at Malankara World Cafe

Humor: Guilt

The minister arose to address his congregation. "There is a certain man among us today who is flirting with another man's wife. Unless he puts ten dollars in the collection box, his name will be read from the pulpit."

When the collection plate came in, there were 19 ten dollar bills, and a five dollar bill with this note attached: "Other five on payday."

Hunting Season

The Wednesday night church service coincided with the last day of hunting season. During the service, our pastor asked who had bagged a deer. No one raised a hand.

Puzzled, the pastor said, “I don't get it. Last week many of you said you wouldn't be at church Sunday because of hunting season. I had the whole congregation pray for your deer.”

One hunter said, "Well, preacher, it worked. They're all safe.”

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