I pass a church every day on my drive home, and there’s a new message on their sign every week to announce the theme of that week’s sermon. It’s often pretty generic: stuff like loving thy neighbor and honoring the Sabbath. Typical churchy things, stuffy and predictable. Sometimes, though, the sign is unintentionally hilarious.
A few weeks ago, it said “Speak the word only.” I giggled as I passed it, thinking I should walk up to it and whisper “only” to see if any invisible Elvish doors opened up for me.
They’re not trying to be funny, like some of the ones I see in the internet. It wouldn’t be as funny to me if they were trying for the cheap pun. I think they’re trying to put out a sincere message, and my brain can’t help but want to twist it.
This week, for example, it says “The Wrong Kind of Feast.”
And it’s taking every bit of my self-restraint (and fear of trespassing charges) to keep me from sneaking up there and adding a big posterboard that says “Soylent Green is PEOPLE!”
You guys all mess with signs too, right? At least in your heads?
I used to pass a Big O Tires that went completely dark at night except for their sign. Well, most of their sign. It quite often read just BigOT. (Their logo/sign runs the letters together pretty closely.)
(that’s dwarvish doors, btw, even if the inscription was Elvish)
My inner child is always in need of a sharpie or roll of black tape when I pass a sign saying TO LET, where there is invariably just room for a letter I.
A Norfolk village named Poringland sometimes had an extra loop added to its first letter, suggesting some locals found it less than enthralling.
Last year a local church gave a series of interconnected sermons. To advertise them on their readerboard, they started a sentence and added on to it each week. I forget what the whole thing ultimately read but for the first couple of weeks, all it said was, “God Loved.”
Next time you are bored in church, leaf through the hymnal and mentally add “in bed” to the name of each hymn.
Like:
“How Great Thou Art”
“Jesus Lover of my Soul”
“Abide with Me”
“Jesus Loves Me This I Know”
“I Give You My Heart”
“Come, Thou Almighty King”
“Draw Me Close”
“Jesus Loves the Little Children”
“How Deep the Father’s Love for Us”
“The Risen Christ”
“Have Thine Own Way, Lord”
“Not What My Hands Have Done”
“Jesus Paid It All”
“I Am Thine, O Lord”
This reminds of what my daughter told me once. When you get a fortune cookie, add the phrase “between the sheets” to your fortune. It is surprising how often it works. E.g., “You will have a good day…”
Once when I was in Pittsburgh, I saw a sign on a church on Forbes Ave. that said, “We deliver”.