It's all the delivery my friends

Sombrero made in church to celebrate Mexico's Independence Day.

Yesterday was "Welcome Back" Sunday at our church.  This is basically the first Sunday after school starts and everyone decides that maybe it's time to quit skipping regular services and get back to it.  I'm a firm believer in Church/God is everywhere, particularly in the summer.  So, we tend to slack off the services in the summer and get out and find Him/Her in the natural world via walks and camping etc. 

This year as the kids gathered up front for Children's time I am delighted to see there are more kids and a new teacher.  (We have great Sunday school teachers, but they all could use a break from time to time)  He tells all the kids a story.  It went something like this:

There was a man who gathered enough sticks to build a fire in the cold evening air.  It was cold so he invited others to join him around this fire.  Everyone who came brought a stick with them.  Sticks that could be used to keep the fire going.  As the evening wore on, the fire began to die out, but no one was willing to put their stick on the fire.  One man, who was poor looked at the main across the way, who was clearly rich, and thought, "he should put his stick on, why should I be first?"  And the rich man thought, "Why should I be the one to take care of all the other people, the should put their sticks on."   Another man looked around and thought, "these people all have the same skin color, I'm not sharing my stick" and still another thought, "Why should I share with that man who's different from me".  And on and on.  You can imagine what eventually happened, the fire died out and all they had left was a pile of useless sticks and cold.

The kids all got the message right away, "they should share!" "Who cares what color they are!"  "They should have worked together!"  came the responses.  And then just as things were winding down and the kids were dismissed for class, N raised his hand.  "I know what that's called, " he said.  The teacher turns to N and puts the microphone up to his mouth and says, "Yes, N?"

SEX discrimination!!  (cue uproarious laughter from entire congregation and all eyes on Mom at the back of the church....)

Welcome back indeed my friends, welcome back...