Opinions

I walked purposely into the store, looking for packaging tape. It was not stocked with the office supplies, nor with the gift wrap. “Packaging tape,” I said to the clerk. He took me to the four-pack of everyday, gift-wrapping tape. “No, the wide, stronger tape,” I tried to explain. “Like for wrapping a package for mailing…” I added. “Comes on a roll with a dispenser and a serrated little blade for easy use,” said I. Finally, we were within the same universe.

Which dog is it?

The vast complexity of the human mind has fascinated mankind since the beginning. As our divine book of instruction, the Bible says that as a man or woman thinks, so are they. Since we are the accumulation of our thoughts, we cannot overly stress the importance of believing what is true in order to live in God’s favor. This sounds easy and I guess it could be if we lived in a secluded garden where all there was to do is take care of the landscaping and play with the animals. However, when Satan was allowed access to the garden to tempt and influence humans, they began to reason within their minds and consider possibilities they had never dreamed of before. Once men and women understood good from evil, a new world of choosing and decision-making began and since that time life has been a minefield of heartaches and disappointments.

Our cat, Felix, has turned into an excellent little traveler. “What do you do with your cat?” we are invariably asked when we tell people we are headed off to Mexico to spend the second half of the winter. “Oh! Felix is from Mexico,” my husband, Peter, tells them. “He’s just coming back with us!” And it is true. Felix enjoys his international status.

There Bettylin and I stood in flip-flops and faded denim shorts ‘neath the old apple tree. Paying our last respects.

It’s been a big year for our cat, Felix. Sometime in late 2023, Felix was scooped up off the street in Mexico by a teenager and brought to the home of her mother and aunt. I’m not sure how he was received when he arrived. They already had 11 dogs, at least a couple of cats and several birds. They gave him food and a home, and I imagine the teenager, Daniela, thought that the fostering arrangement would eventually become permanent.

Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me. But is the old rhyme really true? Can words inflict harm and pain? The ingenuity of man has seen them develop stones, clubs and tools during the stone age that became spears used to bring down mammals. Combining their managing of fire produced brontosaurus burgers. Those instruments were fashioned into weapons that both protected them from predators, sometimes including man.

I receive questions about God and the Bible, and one of the more frequent is whether God really listens and answers prayer. We know He answers every request because of His promise in I John 5:14-15. “And this is the confidence that we have in Him, that, if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. And if we know that He hears us, whatsoever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we desired of Him.” Since we believe the Bible is true, this is an amazing passage, but, it’s not the same as a signed blank check. Read again carefully and notice it says “according to His will.”

Yesterday, I got to talk with an old friend. I used to see Cheryl almost every day. But for the last several years, we have seen each other once a year, at most. She’s going to direct my show, so we’ll be working together again. We had coffee and soup on a very cold day, and I had this strange feeling I had slipped back in time. I didn’t need to explain a thing, talking to this old friend. I knew her and she knew me, and I lost track of the number of times we finished each other’s thoughts.

We are getting close to the end of the first month of 2025. A lot of lofty resolutions that were declared at the beginning of the year have been abandoned. Do you know what the second Friday in January is called? Quitter’s Friday. Why? Because most people have completely given up on their resolutions by that date.