Cybersalt Digest Archive

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Cybersalt News

Oh look, Chicken Thursday!

Yes, I know those are mountain sheep.

Back in November, I shared with you a dash cam picture from my travels during a business trip. That prompted Cybersaltine Raduoos to share this great one from his dash cam. He says it's from near his house in Central Washington. 

From this picture we can see he is driving a Mercedes, but there sure are a lot of Rams to dodge on the road too. In all I can count 16 sheep in this picture - at least that is what I reached before falling asleep.

As for other news, I did have something I thought was totally hilarious that I was going to share here but I ran it past Grandma Cybersalt who ranked it an "Ohhhhh, I don't know honey."

So literally, that's enough said!

Enjoy the rest of today's mailing.

~ Pastor Tim

A daddy teased his little daughter by suggesting she liked a certain boy in her kindergarten class.

The little girl was quite indignant.

"No, daddy, I don't like him!" she stated. "He's only interested in one thing."

Shocked, the daddy cautiously asked what that one thing might be.

"Power Rangers, of course," said the girl.

To everyone that received a book from me for Christmas, they're due back at the library on Friday.

"Be a Billionaire!"

and Help

Refugees and

Persecuted Christians

After a recent college basketball game, the coach spotted a cell phone lying on the floor. He picked it up and handed it to one of the referees, saying, "Here's your phone."

"What makes you think its mine?" the ref asked.

"Easy," the coach replied. "It says you missed 13 calls!"

Always remember this! Grapes must be crushed to make wine. Diamonds form under pressure. Olives are pressed to release oil. Seeds grow in darkness. Whenever you feel crushed, under pressure, pressed, or in darkness, you're in a powerful place of transformation. Trust the process.

- Lalah Delia

"What food might this contain?" The mouse wondered. He was devastated to discover it was a mousetrap.

Retreating to the farmyard, the mouse proclaimed this warning:

"There is a mousetrap in the house! There is a mousetrap in the house!"

The chicken clucked and scratched, raised her head and said, "Mr. Mouse, I can tell this is a grave concern to you, but it is of no consequence to me. I cannot be bothered by it."

The mouse turned to the pig and told him, "There is a mousetrap in the house! There is a mousetrap in the house!"

The pig sympathized, but said, "I am so very sorry, Mr. Mouse, but there is nothing I can do about it."

The mouse turned to the cow and said, "There is a mousetrap in the house! There is a mousetrap in the house!"

The cow said, "Wow, Mr. Mouse. I'm sorry for you, but it's no skin off my nose."

So, the mouse returned to the house, head down and dejected, to face the farmer's mousetrap . . . alone.

That very night a sound was heard throughout the house - the sound of a mousetrap catching its prey.

The farmer's wife rushed to see what was caught.

In the darkness, she did not see it.

It was a venomous snake whose tail was caught in the trap.

The snake bit the farmer's wife.

The farmer rushed her to the hospital. When she returned home she still had a fever.

Everyone knows you treat a fever with fresh chicken soup. So the farmer took his hatchet to the farmyard for the soup's main ingredient:

But his wife's sickness continued.

Friends and neighbors came to sit with her around the clock. To feed them, the farmer butchered the pig.

But, alas, the farmer's wife did not get well . . . she died.

So many people came for her funeral that the farmer had the cow slaughtered to provide enough meat for all of them for the
funeral luncheon..

And the mouse looked upon it all from his crack in the wall with great sadness.

So, the next time you hear someone is facing a problem and you think it doesn't concern you, remember: When one of us is threatened, we are all at risk. We are all involved in this journey called life. We must keep an eye out for one another and make an extra effort to encourage one another…

Featured Illustrations are items well suited for illustrating or inspiring a point in a sermon, speech, or devotional. Funny, moving, or perhaps even graphic, the point of them is the point you make with them.

The Cybersalt Digest is a ministry of Pastor Tim and Cybersalt.

Click here to view this edition online!  

Cybersalt News

Sunday greetings everyone and Happy New Year!

I am happy to report that I did finally catch up on my "throw it in the box for later" box (Grandma Cybersalt now has it for taking things to charity), manage every email I received in 2020, and have a clear desk before the end of the year. I took this picture of my work area on January 1st, all ready to keep on keeping up and catching up on more now that the clutter isn't sucking the motivation out of my mind.

Now that the new year is here I've started doing something I did many years ago: skipping rope. Of course I'm doing so in response to my high cholesterol results.

Wow, am I ever out of shape! Last night I did my jumping just before getting ready for bed, however after only 74 jumps I ended up having to rest before I could do so. Tonight I am getting ready for bed first and then I'll exercise. In England I think this is called skipping after the loo!

Today's video share is a performance of that familiar New Year's tune, "Auld Land Syne." It's sung by a group I have been really enjoying listening to online: The Choral Scholars of University College of Dublin.

Click here to watch the video.

Enjoy the rest of today's mailing!

~ Pastor Tim

A couple with three children waited in line at San Francisco's Pier 41 to purchase tickets for a boat trip to Alcatraz.

Others watched with varying degrees of sympathy and irritation as the young children fidgeted, whined, and punched one another. The frazzled parents reprimanded them to no avail.

Finally they reached the ticket window.

"Five tickets, please," the father said. "Two round trip, three one way."

One of the hardest decisions in life is when to start middle age.

"Be a Billionaire!"

and Help

Refugees and

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I told the doctor I broke my leg in two places.

He told me to quit going to those places.

"My wish for the New Year -
That you have someone to love,
have meaningful work to do,
and have things greater than yourself to believe in;
that you have a reason to smile every day
and a shoulder to cry on when you need it;
that you keep your integrity even when the choices are hard;
that you love deeply, give freely,
forgive willingly, laugh easily,
and live well enough to be grateful for every day."

- Margaret B. Moss

A few years back, I had my old 45 RPM records out to look through and my daughter asked what they were. I explained that back in the 1960s before CDs were invented, this was how we listened to music. I further explained how all the bands issued singles on these "45s," and radio stations would rate the top 40 songs every week.

She was quite impressed as I continued describing how one used a phonograph to play them.

I burst out laughing when she asked -- perfectly straight faced -- "Daddy, how many megs of RAM does one of these hold?"

Featured Illustrations are items well suited for illustrating or inspiring a point in a sermon, speech, or devotional. Funny, moving, or perhaps even graphic, the point of them is the point you make with them.

Rev. James Snyder, God's Penman, writes . . . . 

It is not that I am colorblind; I just am color indifferent. Red and blue and yellow are all the same to me.

This, on many occasions, has challenged the Gracious Mistress of the Parsonage, who is very meticulous when it comes to describing anything or anyone.

In remodeling my office at the parsonage my wife asked, “What color would you like the walls to be painted?”

The Cybersalt Digest is a ministry of Pastor Tim and Cybersalt.

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Cybersalt News

Oh look, Chicken Thursday and New Year's Eve!

I have lots of thoughts and feelings as we say goodbye to 2020 and head into 2021. I had plans to write some of them down with great flourish and inspiring conclusion, but you know what? I'm pretty tired of thinking, and coping, and positing what the current times mean for now and tomorrow. They say that still waters run deep, but it is equally true that deep waters sometimes sit still - behind a dam. And, just as there are times for dams to treasure up water, there are times for hearts to treasure up mystery.

We live in a world where many cannot, or refuse to, tolerate mystery. Instead, they conjure the imaginary to pretend they have explained the unfathomable, while mocking those who continue to believe in the goodness of the One for whom even the darkness is light.  This dichotomy of reaction is nothing new. In the midst of his great suffering, Job's wife (herself struggling with the same incredible losses that he was experiencing) suggested that he, "Curse God and Die." Accepting, if not embracing, the mystery of the time Job replied, "Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble?"

Did you know that the steps leading to the temple in Jerusalem are irregular on purpose? Land of the Bible [dot] com explains, "The stairs are irregular, with both original and replaced stones, which forced the faithful to pay attention as they ascended the alternating wide and narrow steps. It also prevented a hurried approach to the Temple, which would be tempting with the thousands of people here." 

I think we can all agree 2020 was an irregular step that slowed us all down. I rushed into 2020 sure that it was going to be great and that in the next 12 months I was going to "kill it!"

Lesson learned!

I'm not rushing into 2021, but I am stepping into it and doing so with hope because I'm a follower of Jesus and I know that not only is He with me in this massive reservoir of life's mystery, but that also some day the dam will break and what He was doing all along will be clear. And then I'll really be OK.

From depths of my heart I pray that you will step into the new year the same way and I truly hope and wish that 2021 is an incredibly healthy and prosperous year - in every way - for you and those around you.

~ Pastor Tim

My human will never let me eat their pet hamster, and I am at peace with that.

I will not slurp fish food from the surface of the aquarium

I will not eat large numbers of assorted bugs, then come home and throw them up so the humans can see that I'm getting plenty of roughage.

I will not lean way over to drink out of the tub, fall in, and then pelt right for the box of clumping cat litter. (It took FOREVER to get the stuff out of my fur.)

I will not use the bathtub to store live mice for late-night snacks.

We will not play "Herd of Thundering Wildebeests Stampeding Across the Plains of the Serengeti" over any humans' bed while they're trying to sleep.

I cannot leap through closed windows to catch birds outside. If I forget this and bonk my head on the window and fall behind the couch in my attempt, I will not get up and do the same thing again.

I will not assume the patio door is open when I race outside to chase leaves.

I will not stick my paw into any container to see if there is something in it. If I do, I will not hiss and scratch when my human has to shave me to get the rubber cement out of my fur.

If I bite the cactus, it will bite back.

I will not puff my entire body to twice its size for no reason after my human has watched a horror movie.

When it rains, it will be raining on all sides of the house.

It is not necessary to check every door.

I will not play "dead cat on the stairs" while people are trying to bring in groceries or laundry, or else one of these days, it will really come true.

When the humans play darts, I will not leap into the air and attempt to catch them.

I will not swat my human's head repeatedly when they are on the family room floor trying to do sit ups.

When my human is typing at the computer, their forearms are *not* a hammock.

Computer and TV screens do not exist to backlight my lovely tail.

I will not stand on the bathroom counter, stare down the hall, and growl at NOTHING after my human has watched The Walking Dead.

I will not drag dirty socks onto the bed at night and then yell at the top of my lungs so that my humans can admire my "kill."

I will not perch on my human's chest in the middle of the night and stare until they wake up.

I will not walk on the key board when my human is writing important adagfsg gdjag ;ln.

If you're such a good cook, why do we have to pray before every meal?

"Be a Billionaire!"

and Help

Refugees and

Persecuted Christians

A snail was involved in an accident that resulted in his shell being torn completely off.

Hearing about the accident, one of his friends rushed over (as much as a snail can rush) to his friend's house.

"I heard about your accident!" he exclaimed, and then asked, "How are you feeling?"

The recovering snail answered, "Sluggish."

The coach's wife yells to her husband, "It's Sports Illustrated on the phone."

The coach falls all over himself racing to the phone and says, "Hello?"

Then he hears, "For just $20 a year..."

Featured Illustrations are items well suited for illustrating or inspiring a point in a sermon, speech, or devotional. Funny, moving, or perhaps even graphic, the point of them is the point you make with them.

The Cybersalt Digest is a ministry of Pastor Tim and Cybersalt.

Click here to view this edition online!  

Cybersalt News

Sunday greetings everyone!

There are only 5 days left in 2020 and in that short time I have a number of pre-New Year's goals to accomplish. They are:

• End the year with a zero inbox for emails received in 2020. I'm close on this one - but it is still going to take a concentrated effort.
• Empty the "toss it in this box and do it later" box that has been sitting on the floor of my office. I thought it was left over from when I closed my office at the church in October of 2017, but my wife reminded me it existed for years before that. It still seems to me it has only been 3 years, but I'm taking her word for it because that thing is practically invisible to me and I sure she has a better eye for spotting my messes because she lives with them. Fortunately for me, that seems to be an ability she developed after we were married. I think constantly gazing at me in admiration while were were dating and then engaged was a helpful distraction in this area.
• Go to bed New Year's Eve with a clean desk. This one is a 5 minute tidy away from completion after Grandma Cybersalt took a couple of hours and help me tackle it last weekend.
• Finish up a bit of work for clients that I am super behind in. I think I can make a good dent in this one, but business is growing and I just incorporated so there is a bunch of fiddly paperwork and setting up I have to tackle this week as I wrap up being a sole proprietor. (Technically, even when I was a sole proprietor I was already limited to a degree.)
• Be kind to myself. It's the last week of a very tough year so I'm going to cut myself some slack in having to reach my goals. Stressing about reaching them will only make them harder to attain. Accomplishing and celebrating steps along the way is a much greater motivator for me.

This week's video share is actually a playlist for the first season of "The Chosen."

Last Thursday's video share about the shepherds in Bethlehem was actually the unintentional pilot for this series. The shepherd video was made for a church by Dallas Jenkins following the biggest failure of his directing career, but it went viral and that lead to this amazing series.

Click here to find the playlist on YouTube.

Enjoy the rest of today's mailing!

~ Pastor Tim

We purchased an old home in Northern New York State from two elderly sisters.

Winter was fast approaching and I was concerned about the house's lack of insulation.

"If they could live here all those years, so can we!" my husband confidently declared.

One November night the temperature plunged to below zero, and we woke up to find interior walls covered with frost. My husband called the sisters to ask how they had kept the house warm. After a rather brief conversation, he hung up.

"For the past 30 years," he muttered, "they've gone to Florida for the winter."

When I was a kid my parents moved a lot, but I always found them.

- Rodney Dangerfield

"Be a Billionaire!"

and Help

Refugees and

Persecuted Christians

Did you hear about the self-help group for compulsive talkers?

Its called On & On Anon.

"Be good to people. You will be remembered more for your kindness than any level of success you could possibly attain."

- Mandy Hale

The coach's wife yells to her husband, "It's Sports Illustrated on the phone."

The coach falls all over himself racing to the phone and says, "Hello?"

Then he hears, "For just $20 a year..."

Featured Illustrations are items well suited for illustrating or inspiring a point in a sermon, speech, or devotional. Funny, moving, or perhaps even graphic, the point of them is the point you make with them.

Rev. James Snyder, God's Penman, writes . . . . 

It's hard to believe, but another Christmas has come and gone. It comes so slow but leaves so fast. I guess I'll never understand that. This Christmas was probably the most unusual that I have ever experienced.

When I was young, I remember those first Christmases; they were so slow in getting here. I think for the week leading up to Christmas, every day gained at least 10 new hours. By the time Christmas Eve arrived, I was so worn out waiting that I didn't know what to do. 

I can't remember my first Christmas because I was only five months old at the time. I have a hard time remembering those early Christmases, but I'm sure they were times of fun and merriment. There were no cell phones at that time and so I have no selfies to show.

The Cybersalt Digest is a ministry of Pastor Tim and Cybersalt.