If you are reading this before January 20th, you are reading it before something happens that has happened nineteen times during my lifetime. I was only about four months old when it happened for the first time in my lifetime, so I don’t remember much about it. The same goes for the second time when I was only a little over four years old.   It really wasn’t until I was a little over twelve years old that I sort of got “plugged in” to what was happening. I was intrigued with all of the pageantry that went along with a presidential inauguration ceremony.   While all of that pageantry was very impressive, I…

Do you remember all of those predictions that were made a little over a year ago as we looked forward to 2020? If 2020 proved anything, it proved that we cannot see into the future with 20/20 vision.  I’m guessing that, by the time you read this, some of us have already not been so resolute about some resolutions we made only a few days ago. I’m also guessing that some predictions for a year that is still in its infancy have already been proven to be wrong.   Why, then, would anybody be bold enough (or stupid enough) to make any kind of prediction for 2021? The answer is actually fairly simple. It…

As difficult as it may be to believe, some of the items that made the news at this time of the year twenty years ago sound eerily familiar. Perhaps the best example of this is that much of the news concerned a contentious and controversial presidential election in which even the United States Supreme Court got involved. Do the names Bush and Gore and the phrase “hanging chad” ring a bell?   The purpose of this post has nothing to do with major world events, news about powerful and important people, economic trends or any other matters that make national or international headlines. As I’m typing these words, my mind is on matters of…

Remember when we all had the “2020 Vision” lines and sermons? (Yes, I preached that one, too.) This was going to be a fantastic year. Instead, a lot of this year has been a struggle and has kept us feeling down. Okay, so the “If 2020 were a…” memes are hilarious, but other than those, this year has been pretty down for a great number of people. I told someone the other day, after they had said that 2020 has been awful, “Yeah, I’ve had better years…like, every one before this.” But before we just write off this entire year as awful, how about a little different perspective? For some,…

I am writing these words just after finishing my morning walk. That’s also when I took the picture that you see below.  To many people, this is just another morning. To me, my morning walk was just another walk. That all changed when I approached what you see in this picture: My wife and I moved into the neighborhood in which we now live a little over five years ago. We were just getting to know the people in the neighborhood and were gradually becoming aware of some of the customary ways of doing things.   We had driven through this neighborhood during the holiday season a few times before moving here and had…