Exit 11 Woodbridge Jesus

Dave Ramsey, the personal money management expert, extols the virtue of the 7 baby steps to financial peace. Step 1: $1,000 in emergency fund; Step 3: three to six months expenses in savings; Step 4: invest 15% of income; Step 5: save for college. These steps all involve some form of saving while Step 7 involves quite the opposite…giving.

Now I’m a hands-on, visual kinda guy so while wise old Dave provides wonderful web-based tracking documents galore, I’m so old school that I’m thinking of my savings more on the lines of a piggy bank.

Then as fate would have it, I stumbled into that mecca of all things crappy retail, Spencer Gifts in Woodbridge. As a meandered through the toxic air of over-sized rubber boobs and every body part known to man and woman, I found my Jesus-inspired piggy bank.

I’m savin’ up for Jesus! Now that motivates me. There’s just something about a large coin hitting the bottom of tin that excites my savings gene. And every time I drop a dime I’m reminded (photo) Jesus Saves Me.

While I may not be able stuff all of Dave Ramsey’s baby steps into this tin canister, Step 7 is written there right on the side. When this bank is bursting with blessed cash, be sure to hand it over to your favorite nun or priest.

Baby Steps 1,3, 4 & 5: Hebrews 12:11 "No discipline (savings) seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it."

Baby Step 7: II Corinthians 9:7
"God loves a cheerful giver."

Exit 11 GSP Sayreville Missing Jesuses

By Mary Jo Patterson
Religion News Service

Sayreville, N.J. - Detectives investigating the theft of a baby Jesus statue
from an outdoor Nativity scene at a Sayreville church followed a trail on Monday (Jan. 2, 2008) that led them to the missing statue -- and 26 other baby Jesus figurines.

Police said they assumed all 27 statues had been stolen, although they did
not know from where.

Police spread the figurines out on a counter at police headquarters to take
inventory. All lay, in swaddling clothes, on their backs.

"It looks like a nursery here," said police spokesman Ken Kelly.

The figurines, most of them plastic, were found stashed "in plain view" in a
car parked outside the home of Christopher Olson, 18, of Old Bridge,
N.J.,police said.

The discovery brought relief to the parishioners of St. Stanislaus Church,
who had taken the theft of their statue very hard, according to the Rev. Ken
Murphy, their pastor.

The theft, as well as the theft of a smaller baby Jesus from the church's
school and the toppling of a 15-foot crucifix in the church's cemetery, took
place late last week (Dec. 30 or 31).

By late Monday, word of the baby Jesus stash had begun to circulate in Old
Bridge.

Lou Saverese, a resident of the street where the car was found, said a
mystery had been solved. About three weeks before Christmas, he said, the
baby Jesus in his Nativity scene disappeared.

"My wife thought the wind might have taken it away, but then we noticed
other people on the block were also missing their baby Jesus," he said.
Then, in a park down the road, he saw two more plastic Jesus figures hanging
from a telephone pole. Police cut them down.

Rev. Murphy said it best: "As I told people ..., the most important thing is, we celebrated the birthof Jesus," he said. "Jesus is in many different places. If they saw the display and saw he wasn't there, they would be reminded that he is in them."

John 15:4" Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in Me.