My lunch hour was running a little bit long. I’d just gotten a new game on my phone—Jeopardy—and was in the middle of a heated round of questions. “The ’50s” was the category, 100 fake dollars on the line. Clearly, work had to wait. Impressing a digital Alex Trebek was far more important.
Then the answer popped up, waiting for me to provide the question:
“Norman Vincent Peale promoted the power of this.”
Oh boy. Of course I knew the right question: “What is Positive Thinking?” but I put the phone down. Obviously, somebody was telling me to get back to work.
If you chuckled a bit—and hopefully you did—you’ll recognize that Mysterious Ways stories don’t always have to be deadly serious. While we often feel a power greater than us enter our lives during a time of stress, tragedy, sorrow or crisis, there are also times when something unexpected tickles us and gets us to smile. Take for example, the first “His Humorous Ways” story in our premiere issue of Mysterious Ways. All Lynda Araoz wanted to do was see a moose during a hike with her son…
One of the worst things we do to ourselves is get tied in knots over unimportant or frivolous things, or build up stress and worry instead of being productive. When this happens, sometimes a laugh can get us back on track. Make us see things clearly. Gain some perspective. That’s what every “His Humorous Ways” story we publish in Mysterious Ways does.
We want to hear more of your funny stories. What sort of chance encounters, unexpected discoveries, mistaken identities, unlikely mix-ups or crazy misunderstandings has made you laugh along with the Big Guy Upstairs? What glimpses of his presence have made you lighten up and remember to take things less seriously? Share your “His Humorous Ways” stories with us, and share the laughter with your fellow readers.
I’ll end this post with a joke a Christian friend once told me.
Jesus and Satan were arguing about who was better on the computer. They had been going at it for days, and finally God stepped in. “I will test you on the computer for two hours,” he said. “At the end, I will judge who did a better job.”
So Satan and Jesus sat down and began typing. They wrote reports. They made spreadsheets. They created labels and cards. Charts and graphs. Did a little Photoshop. Even wrote some computer code.
Both were evenly matched. But just before their time was up, lightning flashed across the sky and the power went out. Satan said every curse word he could. Jesus just sighed.
When the electricity returned, Satan rebooted his computer. “It’s all gone! I lost everything!” he screamed. Meanwhile, Jesus started printing out all of his files.
“Wait!” Satan whined. “That’s not fair! How did I lose everything and he did not?”
God just shrugged. “Jesus saves.”
