The Curates Egg

Our local Paper (The Gazette) publishes a "Christian Comment" piece each week and this is one I wrote for them last year -

Two men were running away from an angry bear. One stopped to put on his trainers. The other said "you fool; you can't out run a bear". He replied "I don't need to out run the bear; I only need to out run you".

What has that to do with "Christian Comment" – nothing really, except that it made me laugh, and I thought this column is usually a bit serious so why not include a joke.

In fact I think the church in general comes over as pretty serious when, at a local level at least, there is a lot of healthy laughter. Living out and sharing the Gospel message is the most important thing anyone can do – but we can take that seriously without always being serious. The ability to laugh, particularly at ourselves, is a God given part of our humanity. It helps our relationship with others and it's good for us because it keeps us grounded in reality and stops us getting too het up about the things that don't matter too much.

At one church (not ours!) there was once a very disagreeable Parochial Church Council Meeting where tempers flared and insults were exchanged - all over a relatively minor matter. The next day one of the PCC members felt guilty and went to talk to the vicar, and asked him how he had slept after such an upsetting meeting. The Vicar replied, "I slept like a baby". "Really!" said the surprised PCC member. "Oh yes" said the Vicar "I woke up every hour crying".

other jokes of even less depth and subtlety: -

Three Parrots...

Cabby

Corny

Steve Wright (not the DJ)

Tommy Cooper

Accountant

Pirate

Jigsaw

The Curate's Egg