**WARNING** This post contains irreverent humour. If you're sensitive about your faith, stop reading now.Living in south Georgia, you can't really get away from religion. Don't get me wrong, it's pretty pluralistic down here, generally. Savannah is even home to one of the oldest Jewish communities in the South ( I think we're just behind Charleston, SC). I am, however, firmly agnostic. I don't bear any grudge to anyone who is religious. I believe in something higher than me, I'm just not sure what it is. I have great admiration for people who do, no matter what faith they practice.
But living here means that everywhere you go, there seems to be a church. Not just a couple, but dozens. Take Guyton, Georgia, for example. The town, itself, is tiny. Maybe a few hundred people live in the "city" limits. But there are five churches. And if you drive a little ways out of town on either Hwy. 17 or Hwy 119, you'll find about a dozen more before you come to a town. It's the same regardless of where you are in the South.
And almost every single one has a lighted message board, with a clever church related phrase. I think this is a relatively new phenomenon. I don't remember this growing up in Canada, and I also don't really remember it when I was living in Michigan, but they are all over the place down here.
It's been ridiculously hot down here the past few weeks, and here is a sampling of some of the messages we've seen this week:
From a Baptist Church: "If you think it's hot here...."
From a Church of Christ: "Can't stand the heat? Better get Jesus in your life!"
From another Baptist church: "If you think it's hot here, you better think about where you could be going."
From a Church of God: "Let the heat now remind you of what's to come if you don't live right."
From a United Methodist Church: "This Sunday how to cope with resentment."
From the only Catholic Church in town "Gossip hurts everyone."
My favorite by far, though, is from another Baptist church that I drive by frequently on my way to work.
"SS Picnic this Saturday"
Now before y'all freak out and think we have Nazis in Georgia (I hate Georgia Nazis), I'm pretty sure they meant "Sunday School Picnic". I'm hoping that they just didn't have enough letters to complete the sign. Of course, this is the same church that had a sign a few weeks ago that said "Ice Cream Social and Gospel Sing, next Thursday". Which prompted my husband to say to me "Do you like your religion with nuts, or without?"
So I got to thinking, that maybe there's a book of phrases that churches use to come up with something for their message boards each week.
I couldn't find any legitimate ones online, but I did find this:
And I made this:
It's irreverent, I know.
Oh, and a quick note, we've been having modem issues. It keeps disconnecting itself. So, I may not be posting every morning, it may be later in the afternoon. Sorry about that.
