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WITandWISDOM(tm) - July 3, 2006 ISSN 1538-8794 ~~~~~~~ THOUGHTS: "It is better to give than to lend, and it costs about the same." - Sir Philip Gibbs Submitted by Nancy A Thomas ~~~~~~~ SPECIAL THOUGHTS: Tony Campolo tells a story about being in a church in Oregon where he was asked to pray for a man who had cancer. Campolo prayed boldly for the man's healing. That next week he got a telephone call from the man's wife. She said, "You prayed for my husband. He had cancer." Campolo thought when he heard her use the past tense verb that his cancer had been eradicated! But before he could think much about it she said, "He died." Campolo felt terrible. But she continued, "Don't feel bad. When he came into that church that Sunday he was filled with anger. He knew he was going to be dead in a short period of time, and he hated God. He was 58 years old, and he wanted to see his children and grandchildren grow up. He was angry that this all-powerful God didn't take away his sickness and heal him. He would lie in bed and curse God. The more his anger grew towards God, the more miserable he was to everybody around him. It was an awful thing to be in his presence. But the lady told Campolo, "After you prayed for him, a peace had come over him and a joy had come into him. Tony, the last three days have been the best days of our lives. We've sung. We've laughed. We've read Scripture. We prayed. Oh, they've been wonderful days. And I called to thank you for laying your hands on him and praying for healing." And then she said something incredibly profound. She said, "He wasn't cured, but he was healed." Source: Weekend Encounter, by Dick Innes, Copyright (c) ACTS International, 2004, http://www.actsweb.org/subscribe.php ~~~~~~~ THIS & THAT: Rambling Thoughts Part 1 of 2 [July 3, 13] I planted some birdseed. A bird came up. Now I don't know what to feed it. I had amnesia once -- or twice. I went to San Francisco. I found someone's heart. Now what? Protons have mass? I didn't even know they were Catholic. What is a "free" gift? Aren't all gifts free? They told me I was gullible and I believed them. Teach a child to be polite and courteous in the home and when he grows up, he'll never be able to merge his car onto a freeway. Two can live as cheaply as one, for half as long. Experience is the thing you have left when everything else is gone. What if there were no hypothetical questions? One nice thing about egotists: They don't talk about other people. If the only tool you own is a hammer, every problem begins to look like a nail. What was the greatest thing before sliced bread? Hmmmm? Submitted by R. P. Cly ~~~~~~~ KEEP SMILING: At an out-of-town high school basketball tournament, one of our players handed his Mom a running shoe with the laces in a knotted mess. She worked on them for about 20 minutes, but couldn't straighten them out. The coach came out of the locker room, took the shoe and in seconds had the laces untangled. "How did you do that?" she asked him in disbelief. He laughed. "I taught kindergarten for five years." Submitted by Lorraine ~~~~~~~ TRIVIA: A Russian cosmonaut is aiming to drive a golf ball two billion miles in space. Mikhail Tyurin will launch his ball using a gold-plated six iron from a special tee attached to a platform on the International Space Station. Scientists say the ball will circle the Earth for up to four years at a speed of five miles a second before falling from orbit and burning up in the atmosphere. American space scientists were said to be worried that the ball would be bouncing off satellites as it rocketed into golfing history. But Nataliya Hearn, chief executive officer of Element 21, the Toronto-based golf equipment manufacturer sponsoring the shot, insisted there was no opposition from Nasa. "All the guys that work there play golf, so this is something that appeals to their western sensibility," she said. Element 21 manufactures golf clubs made from scandium, a rare alloy used in the Russian-built part of the space station. It has paid an undisclosed sum to the Russian space agency for the rights to the long-distance publicity stunt. Source: Ananova http://www.ananova.com