The Christian shoemaker does his duty not by putting little crosses on the shoes, but by making good shoes, because God is interested in good craftsmanship. 

–Martin Luther

Jeff had gone to propose to his girlfriend and returned home crying bitterly. “What happened, son?” his father asked, eagerly awaiting her response. “Did she accept?”

“No, she sure didn’t,” sobbed Jeff. “When I told her what you advised me to say, she slapped my face and told me to get out.”

“Did you begin by telling her what I told you to say, what I told your mother when she accepted my proposal? ‘Sweetheart, time stands still when I look in your eyes.’ Did you tell her that?” asked his father.

“Oh boy, Dad, did I got it all wrong,” Jeff groaned. “I said, ‘My dear, you have a face that would stop a clock!’”

Received from GCFL

A lady noticed her husband standing on the bathroom scale, sucking in
his stomach. Thinking he was trying to weigh less with this maneuver,
she
commented, “I don’t think that’s going to help.”

“Sure it does,” he said. “It’s the only way I can see the numbers.”

Received from GCFL

Corrie Ten Boom shares this true story in her book, “The Hiding Place”…

It was a church service in Munich that I saw him, the former S.S. man who had stood guard at the shower room door in the processing center at Ravensbruck.

He was the first of our actual jailers that I had seen since that time. And suddenly it was all there – the roomful of mocking men, the heaps of clothing, Betsie’s pain-blanched face.

He came up to me as the church was emptying, beaming and bowing. “How grateful I am for your message, Fraulein,” he said. “To think that, as you say, He has washed my sins away!”

His hand was thrust out to shake mine. And I, who had preached so often to the people the need to forgive, kept my hand at my side.

Even as the angry, vengeful thoughts boiled through me, I saw the sin of them. Jesus Christ had died for this man; was I going to ask for more? “Lord Jesus,” I prayed, “forgive me and help me to forgive him.”

I tried to smile, I struggled to raise my hand. I could not. I felt nothing, not the slightest spark of warmth or charity. And so again I breathed a silent prayer. “Jesus, I cannot forgive him. Give me Your forgiveness.”

As I took his hand the most incredible thing happened. From my shoulder along my arm and through my hand a current seemed to pass from me to him, while into my heart sprang a love for this stranger that almost overwhelmed me.

And so I discovered that it is not on our forgiveness any more than on our goodness that the world’s healing hinges, but on His. When He tells us to love our enemies, He gives, along with the command, the love itself.

Corrie Ten Boom
“The Hiding Place”

forwarded by Cup O’Cheer