"Just think," said the man in the orange hard hat, "to us that's just a useless pile of rock. But to someone with greater vision it has value. It can be changed by his direction into something useful."
"How's that?" someone asked.
"First it has to be crushed, and then heated in a furnace, to give up its old properties and take on new ones. Then it can be mixed with water and molded into something beautiful."
"So that's how you make cement, huh?"
"No," someone said, "that's how you make a Christian."
* * *
An officer came upon a young soldier so weighted down with weapons and ammunition that he couldn't move. "You know why you aren't attacking the enemy, don't you?" asked the officer.
"Yes," replied the soldier. "I'm waiting for more ammunition."
* * *
Once in a pleasant garden there stood a tree, from which, legend said, God himself would one day reign. But instead, a group of wicked men broke in and chopped the tree down. They hacked the tree into a beam and nailed a holy man to it, leaving him to die upon a hill. So the tree of hope now had become a beam covered with blood and death. "See here," the wicked men said, laughing with scorn, "in what manner God's promises are fulfilled."