The Angel of the Lord and Rocks of Luck

Up in heaven lived a naïve and idealistic young angel who spent all his time dreaming of flying the 'Friendly Skies of Heaven'. One day a heavenly recruiter convinced this young angel that all his dreams would come true if he signed up with the 'Heavenly Flying Corp'.

He was promised the friendly skies, but once he signed the legal papers the young angel got stuck with the 'Complaint and Groan Department on Earth'.

The young angel asked, "And how long do I have to do this before I can start flying the Friendly Skies of Heaven?"

"Not long," said the heavenly recruiter. "You'll be reassigned as soon as the people on earth learn how to live in peace and harmony."

The young angel looked down on Earth from his heavenly site just to see what he was being challenged with. "My God! I'm going to be stuck doing this forever!"

The young angel threatened to rebel, so the Heavenly system gave him a new title, 'Angel of the Lord', hoping this would placate him. Then the Heavenly system told him to do what he was told or he'd be sent straight to Hell.

There lived a man in a small town whose little patch of land in the back of the house would not grow any farm produce, which he needed to grow to feed his family. Everyday he became more and more depressed for he had no way of making a living except for farming.

"Turn your life to the lord!" his wife would tell him. "Turn your life to the Lord and all your problems will be solved."

In desperation, one day the man looked up and said, "Lord! Show me a way to make a living and I'll convert to your way of thinking."

The next day, when he woke up, the man noticed how good the sunlight felt coming in through the windows. The air smelled sweeter to him than ever before and as he looked in the distance he saw people approaching his house. "Help is coming!" the man said and looked up at the sky. "Thank you Lord for sending these good neighbors to help me out!"

As the man watched, he saw that when the people got to his fence, they stopped, picked up rocks and threw them into his front yard. All day long people would come over, stop and throw rocks into his yard.

The man figured, "Maybe if I cleaned the yard really good, this might not happen again." So at night he picked up all the rocks and moved them to his field in the back of the house.

Next day more people showed up, stopped at the fence, looked at how clean the front yard was, they picked up more rocks and threw them into the front yard. At night the man picked up the rocks and moved them into the field at the back of the house.

He tried putting up a sign, 'Let Ye who are without sin throw the first rock!' When people came by, they stopped at the fence, read the sign and picked up and threw more rocks.

All this time the man's wife was tiptoeing around trying not to be noticed. When she made the misfortune of crossing his field of vision he snapped at her, "Just what kind of a God you got Lady? A sadist!"

The man's grief and confusion was so great that it was felt all the way in heaven. To deal with the problem, the Angel of the Lord was sent to Earth. The angel appeared in front of the man and spoke as if delivering a revelation, "Alright, what's your beef? You ask for help, you get showered with blessings and still you complain!"

The man was stunned at the sight of the angel but not so stunned that he couldn't reply, "Showered with blessings? If I stand underneath that shower I'm going to get stoned to death!"

The angel replied, "When are you people down here going to learn to make misery work for you! Alright, what's your biggest complain?"

"I feel the world is against me," said the man. "What with people throwing rocks at me and my field covered with rocks, I just don't know how to make any kind of a decent living."

"Is that all?" said the angel. "Tell you what I want you to do. Rent a truck and load all those rocks into it, then come morning I want you to drive the truck to the next town, rent a small corner store, then I want you to sell those rocks to the same people who threw them, as pets."

Hearing this the man just exploded with rage, "Come on now, be serious! Who out there is going to buy pet rocks."