Ever see those "tamper resistant seals" that restaurants use on plastic to-go cups to assure the purchaser that the drink is safe? It's a long thin strip that covers the lid and then sticks to the sides of the cup. If someone breaks the seal and opens the lid, you know it has been "tampered" with.

With joy, we often live as if there is a lid on our capacity for joy. As if joy will come when circumstances change, when someone in our lives straightens up or gets better, or when we figure something out. But joy doesn't work that way. If the Lord dwells in your heart, there should be evidence that He has tampered with your lid on joy!

Join Kat Silverglate, founder of the Mobile Mission Project at The Ridiculous Hour Foundation for the organization's 59th Mission and 30-day responsiveness challenge called Tamper Evident Joy. If you'd like to receive the items described in this challenge for free, go to the contact link at www.theridiculoushour.com

If anybody asked us whether our lives had a central theme, we'd probably bumble and stumble and waffle and throw in a generous number of "umms" while we awkwardly sorted out loud. But not Zelma Colon. When you ask Zelma for the theme that sums up her one ridiculous life, she doesn't even pause. It comes off her tongue as if it was sitting there waiting for an order to deploy -- "beauty for ashes."

And while her recent Multiple Myeloma diagnosis and treatment were an utter shock, these aren't the ashes Zelma is referencing when she looks back at her fifty something turns around the sun. Indeed, she sees cancer as the storm that brought a magnifying glass to the beauty that supplanted the ashes of her past.

Join Kat Silverglate, founder of the Mobile Mission Project at The Ridiculous Hour Foundation, for the release of the Foundation's 58th mission story and challenge -- wASH.

For more information about the project and to receive a free mission pack in the mail, visit www.theridiculoushour.com.

Conflict is weighty. Unresolved conflict after genuine attempts at reconciliation can be downright heavy.

Our story begins with a priest telling a woman to take a feather pillow to the top of a bell tower and release the feathers.

It continues with a woman placing a snow white feather in the hands of a friend with whom she'd had unresolved conflict.

And it ends with a prayer that a single white feather would arrive in time for a conscious reception.

Curious? We sure hope so!

Join Kat Silverglate, founder of the Mobile Mission Project at The Ridiculous Hour Foundation, for the September 2024 mission story and challenge called Feather Weight.

Does anybody love moving? Sure, we may love where we are going, like change or love that we are leaving something behind, but the physical act of moving... not so much. As unsettling as it is though, moving implies a modicum control. Of choice. But being moved... involuntarily... can imply more than an ounce of pain.

Meet Aldos Vance, a fifty-something gentle giant of a lawyer in Alabama, who could teach a master class on being moved because his childhood was largely defined by it.

Our story begins with Al and his mother and siblings moving to a two room apartment that shared a communal bathroom with four other units.

And it ends with Al voluntarily moving the trajectory of his life after hearing a sermon about a paint contractor doing a fabulous job painting the exterior of... the wrong house.

Join Kat Silverglate, founder of the Mobile Mission Project at The Ridiculous Hour Foundation for the August 2024 true story and responsiveness challenge. To receive the free equipping pieces described in this episode, visit theridiculoushour.com contact page and ask for the "Moved Mission Pack."

For most of us, receiving help is harder than giving it. Particularly when we don't know someone very well. We want to hold our own umbrellas in stormy times. But to allow others to cover us? It requires the humility to receive. The humility to be a part of something far bigger than self. The forecast in the family of faith is always partly cloudy with a chance of more cloud coverage because we are surrounded by a cloud of witnesses to what God has done and what He continues to do through this incredible family.

And it ends with an old acquaintance offering a prayer during a fire alarm in the middle of a surgical ward...

Curious?

We sure hope so!

Join Kat Silverglate, founder of the Mobile Mission Project at The Ridiculous Hour Foundation for the July 2024 story and responsiveness challenge -- Partly Cloudy with a Chance of.... More Cloud Coverage.

If you would like a free copy of this month's challenge with the equipping pieces described in this podcast, visit www.theridiculoushour.com and we'll get one out to you right away!

In her book Compelled by Love, Heidi Baker, a missionary in Mozambique, describes a condition we may all have. Or perhaps a touch of. She calls it an orphan spirit. In the Lord, we are adopted children with full access to everything in our Father's house but we live as if the things of God are for the special kids or the ones who really belong in the house or the ones He loves better. What we most need is completely available to us but we live as if someone has restricted our personal access.

Our mission this month begins with a woman who says "I love you" over and over again to a husband who gets annoyed with the repetition: "Do you think I've forgotten? Or don't know? ... Isn't there a point in a relationship where you just know it's true?"

Our mission ends with the story of an abandoned boy in Mozambique who finds freedom from his orphan spirit in a Village of Joy full of repetitive acts of "I love you" and unfettered access to a soda in the family fridge.

Curious? We sure hope so!

Join the founder of the Mobile Mission Project at the Ridiculous Hour Foundation for the June 2024 mission story and challenge called -- Don't Forget to Remember!

If you'd like to receive this Mission Pack in the mail, pop on over to www.TheRidiculousHour.com and we'll get one out to you. They are free.

Imposter syndrome plagues writers. No matter how many times you try to talk them off the ledge or give them a pep talk, they wonder if their words are gonna sound like a whole lot of "blah blah blah" to the reader.

But it isn't just writers, it's most folks with a story to tell. If we are found in the Lord, that includes us! We have an amazing story to tell. Not because we are eloquent, or famous, or great orators or writers, but because God says if we don't speak "the rocks will cry out." Certainly we beat a stone in story skill. Certainly!

Join Kat Silverglate, founder of the Mobile Mission Project at The Ridiculous Hour Foundation as she introduces the May 2024 Mission called Blah Blah Blah and welcomes Georgie Davis. Georgie, a Liberian missionary, cannot tell her hope story without revisiting the most tragic event of her life, reading hundreds of letters that give context to the loss and interviewing folks that were present at the scene 40 years ago.

Listen to how her hardened heart is being remolded and shaped into something akin to putty as she allows the Lord to show her how to process unspeakable loss.

If, after hearing this episode, you would like the equipping pieces discussed, or you'd like to receive Mobile Mission Packs in the mail [free], visit us at TheRidiculousHour.com and we'll get a pack out to you right away.

The racetrack ride at Disney – The Speedway to Tomorrowland – is shockingly real to a kid. Bright popping colorful cars, twisty tracks, revving engines, low leather bucket seats and nobby rubber steering wheels all feel so real. But it’s the actual ride that eventually brings deeper meaning to the concept of “real.”

We steer our cars too hard to the left and… THUNK… we hit the guardrail at the center designed to keep our ride on the track. We react by over-correcting to the right and… THUNK… we hit the guardrail at the center and

Our story begins with a child on a ride concluding her toy car is defective and in continues with her as an adult concluding she's defective because her mistakes feel a whole lot like THUNKING. She comes to believe she isn’t allowed to course correct or THUNK in public spaces, so she hides.

Our story ends with God allowing a course correction that births a women’s ministry with a simple core value -- REAL women get healed because others in the family of faith can only bear what a woman chooses to share.

Join Kat Silverglate, founder of The Mobile Mission Project at The Ridiculous Hour Foundation, Inc. for the April 2024 mission story and challenge called THUNK, THUNK, THUNK. 

If you’d like to receive the free gift included with this Mission, email us at [email protected]

Curious?

We sure hope so!

Ever ironed a crease in the wrong spot in a garment? Once that crease gets set and cool, it's pretty challenging to press it out, isn't it?

Dry cleaners actually use special tags to make sure a crease doesn't end up where one doesn't belong. They say CREASE and NO CREASE. And if they miss the mark [which we all sometimes do], there's a tag for that too -- DO-OVER. You can buy these tags by the thousands at dry cleaning suppliers.... which we did... just for the mission this month.

Because let's face it, who doesn't need a DO-OVER now and again... and again and again?

Curious?

We sure hope so!

Join Ridiculous Hour Foundation Founder Kat Silverglate for the March 2024 Mobile Mission called DO-OVER where we open our hearts to God's call to keep short conflict accounts with others... to iron out creases right away.

And if you'd like the dry cleaning tags we sent out this month with our physical mission packs, we'd be thrilled to snail mail 'em to ya. Just visit our mobile mission page on our website at www.theridiculoushour.com.

We've all said it. Under our breath. In our heads. On our knees. To a trusted friend in whispered tones. "I didn't sign up for this!"

At the start, we genuinely want in. At the startline, we are focused on the rightness of the endeavor, or the possibilities for the future, or the hope or promise or prize, or just something better...

And then it gets hard, or impossible, or inconvenient, or boring or shocking or just plain ugly. And then we hear ourselves say... "I didn't sign up for this."

Our story begins with a classic bucket list item -- a full marathon. It continues on race day with the phrase, "I didn't sign up for this." And it resolves with a new mother teaching her mother-in-love a thing or two about self-sufficiency and God's strength.

Curious? We sure hope so.

Join Kat Silverglate, founder of the Mobile Mission Project at The Ridiculous Hour Foundation for the February 2024 Mobile Mission -- "I Signed Up for This."

To receive the gift and challenge associated with this mission [free], go to the mission page at www.theridiculoushour.com.

Thank you to Shannon Alderman for her sound edits to this podcast. You make The Ridiculous Hour better.