On August 27, 2014, Andy Thomason, news reporter for The Chronicle of Higher Education wrote: “You are getting older. You are older now than you were at the moment this page first loaded. And now you’re even older, and you can’t stem the tide of time.” What he wrote, of course, is correct. From the minute we are born, we continue every second of our lives to get older. Over time, this can become somewhat disconcerting. I suggest that there is, however, something we can do to make each stage of our lives more rewarding.
As human beings, male and female, young and old, we never seem satisfied with where we are in life. For example: Read more…
Categories: Cars, Christianity, Chronicle of Higher Education, College, Forgiveness, Jobs, Religion, School Tags: Apartments, Cars, Clocks, College, Family, Forgiveness, Grandchildren, jobs, Money, Old Testament, Religon, Retirement, School, Time, Watches
This coming Wednesday, March 5, is Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent.? Let?s take a look at the historical emergence and spiritual significance of the Lenten season.?
Lent starts on Ash Wednesday and ends on the day before Easter.? The six Sundays of this time-span are not considered part of Lent.? Only weekdays are included in Lent.? Hence, Lent is the forty weekdays beginning with Ash Wednesday and concluding with the day before Easter.
But how is it that the church adopted ?forty? as the number of weekdays in Lent?? Read more…
Categories: Christianity, Easter, Forgiveness, Lent, The Big Ten of Grammar, William B. Bradshaw Tags: 40, Ash Wednesday, forty, Lent, Mardi Gras, Moses, Mt. Sinai, Nicene Creed, Protestant churches, Roman Catholic Church, Second Vatican Council, Ten Commandments
In times past, most people heated their houses using fireplaces, stoves and coal furnaces. Some people still do. It makes no difference which of these forms of heating one uses, there are always ashes or clinkers to get out of the house and hauled away without leaving a mess behind.
As a boy growing up, it was my job to take out the leftovers from the furnace. I had to put the ashes and clinkers in a large trash can and lug them up the basement stairs and out to the back alley, whether it was raining or snowing, where someone came by and hauled them away. And my mother and father always reminded me not to make dust that went throughout the house. It was a tedious and tiresome job.
The point I’m making here is that it is not always easy to get rid of the useless remnants of living, in this case, the left-over ashes. Read more…
