Posted on by Lori Cartmell

The Master of Disguise

What’s the best Halloween costume you’ve ever seen (or worn)?

I’m particularly fond of costumes involving puns.

Like the fellow who wore a tuxedo with the word “Sorry” pinned to his shirt and went out trick-or-treating as “a formal apology.”

Or the lady who taped a dozen photocopies of pictures of her cat to her shirt. Alert people recognized her costume as that of a “copy cat.”

A simple and clever Halloween costume involves wearing a Groucho Marx-style fake nose and glasses combo, along with a name tag that reads: “Blessing.” This makes you a “blessing in disguise”!

Did you know that Jesus occasionally appeared “in disguise”?

There were a few times after Jesus’ resurrection when His friends didn’t immediately recognize Him. It seems His identity was obscured from them temporarily.

Read more
Posted on by Lori Cartmell · 2 Comments

Label Jars, Not People

By Frank Vincentz, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0

What’s the difference between a tart and a torte?

For that matter, what’s the difference between torte-with-an-e and tort-without-an-e? Are they all edible?

Let’s see if we can straighten out the confusion.

A tart is an open pastry containing a filling. A torte is a multi-layered cake-like confection. They’re both edible (and extremely tasty—see recipe for Lemon Almond Tart below).

Tort is a legal term referring to a wrongful act or infringement of a right. You could try to eat the paper a tort was described on, but I wouldn’t recommend it!

But we’re not quite finished unpacking the meanings of these similar-sounding words.

A tart can also refer to a promiscuous woman: one who has had many sexual partners. A woman others would look down on. A woman polite society might consider to be “loose.”

But we should be careful before we slap anyone with a label such as this. We never know how God might use them.

Read more