The Rules of Bureaucracy

1. Preserve thyself.
2. It is easier to fix the blame than to fix the problem.

3. A penny saved is an oversight.

4. Information deteriorates upward.

5. The first 90% of the task takes 90% of the time; the last 10% takes the other 90%.

6. Experience is what you get just after you need it.

7. For any given large, complex, hard to understand, expensive problem, there exists at least one short, simple, easy, cheap wrong answer.

8. Anything that can be changed will be, until time runs out.

9. To err is human; to shrug is service.

10. There's never enough time to do it right, but there's always enough time to do it over.

Faith And Works

Faith and works should travel side by side, step answering to step, like the legs of men walking. 

First faith, and then works; and then faith again, and then works again -- until they can scarcely distinguish which is the one and which is the other. 

William Booth in The Founder's Messages to Soldiers, Christianity Today, October 5, 1992, p. 48.

Pulling On Both Oars

In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.(James 2:17)

An old Scotsman operated a little rowboat for transporting passengers. One day a passenger noticed that the good old man had carved on one oar the word “Faith,” and on the other oar the word “Works.” Curiosity led him to ask the meaning of this. The old man, being a well-balanced Christian and glad of the opportunity for testimony, said, “I will show you.”
 

So saying, he dropped one oar and plied the other called Works, and they just went around in circles. Then he dropped that oar and began to ply the oar called Faith, and the little boat just went around in circles again—this time the other way around, but still in a circle.
 

After this demonstration the old man picked up Faith and Works and plying both oars together, sped swiftly over the water, explaining to his inquiring passenger, “You see, that is the way it is in the Christian life. Dead works without faith are useless, and “faith without works is dead” also, getting you nowhere. But faith and works pulling together make for safety, progress, and blessing.”

—Bible Friend