Newsworthy

Readers have sent me some items with which I cannot part and that I would like to share with you. To wit:

“God First Ministries” of Chicago has a bulletin addressed to “Dear Public Service Announcer.” It reads, in part:

GFM “is holding its annual Brides of Christ Retreat, ‘Come Away My Beloved!’ Song of Solomon 2:10.” The retreat, held at a hotel near O’Hare airport, “allows men and women to enhance their spiritual growth.” The feature: “The guests participate in a beautiful wedding, spend an intimate weekend with the Bridegroom, Jesus Christ.” Registration includes hotel accommodations, meals “and a complete wedding package.” Something old, something new, something borrowed and something blue, we assume. Are the rooms singles or doubles? Is it a single-ring or double-ring ceremony? Let me get this straight: men spend an intimate weekend with the Bridegroom?

While Solomon is on our minds, think of how useful he would be at First Reformed Church in Holland, Michigan, whose Sunday bulletin notes: “Due to the growing size of our nursery we will be splitting the infants and toddlers.”

Not all partnerships are as happy as the Bride of Christ ideal. This from a Newport Beach, California, newspaper, The Light: A partying couple argued after drinking. “The boyfriend tossed a rock through the front window, and the woman chased him with a wooden pole before burning his toupee on the stove. She then attacked him with a kitchen knife.” Since the toupee was gone, we can’t say she was “cutting a rug.”

Here’s a text for meditation from Miss Alabama in the 1994 Miss USA contest, a text that reached Ann Landers only recently. Each candidate makes a speech in answer to a question such as, “If you could live forever, would you want to, and why?” To which Miss Alabama replied, “I would not live forever, because we should not live forever because if we were supposed to live forever, then we would then live forever, but we cannot live forever, which is why I would not live forever.”

Standards are also going to pot at the Institute for Reformed Theology in Richmond, whose Bulletin (Vol. 1, No. 1) contains this line which, depending on how you look at it, is both Reformed and un-Reformed: Cheryl Lynn Hubbard, a doctoral candidate, writes, “we live in a world where sin is enviable.” Obviously, in respect to most sins.

Now that both parties are mum about gun control and we are doing all we can to make guns available to high schoolers, we might find a Christian way to bless firearms. That, in effect, is what is happening at the High Sierra Christian Church, according to its newsletter “Youth Ministry.” Is “Moses” Heston the youth leader? Under the heading “GUNS FOR GOD” we read that “For a tax deductible contribution . . . you can be the proud owner of . . . a BERETTA AL390 camo shotgun with 3 inch or 2-3/4 chamber. Brand new condition. . . . Never been fired. . . . Contributions: Beretta $795 (new was $895). Also a “Remington 22-250 $600 (was $695) . . .”

Not enough discount to interest us. And we’re suspicious of that “never been fired” part of the advertisement. We are, however, glad to know that whatever the church’s youth ministry does, it does to the glory of God.