Today I went into a retail store and was immediately accosted with secular Christmas music. Now I don’t have anything against Christmas—or Christmas music for that matter. In fact, for the majority of the known world Christmas represents the birthday of the most important person I know and love: Jesus! (even if they don’t actually believe in, know,
In January 2018 French shoppers at a popular grocery store chain were engaged in conflict over a popular food item. Okay, I may be understating what actually happened; they got into fistfights over it! No, I’m not making this up. It actually happened, not over fruit or vegetables, but over a dessert item! Kim Willsher, writing in The Guardian, desc
The biomedical company, Medtronic, has disabled internet updates for approximately 34,000 “CareLink” devices designed for accessing and programming implanted pacemakers due to cybersecurity vulnerabilities with the systems. This was revealed this summer by cybersecurity firm researchers and could allow an outside agent—a “hacker”—to plant malware o
I am a counselor living in the southern United States, and have been directly involved with my community for over 20 years. In my work, I come across a wide swath of people—many of whom consider themselves “Christian,” but are from other denominations besides Adventism. Several years ago, my wife sent me an e-mail that first made me laugh, then mad
My daughter is 12, and her mother and I try to keep up with everything she’s reading, which means that we’re both reading a lot of children’s/preteen literature. As I began to preview the choices of teen/youth/young adult literature, I came to a startling conclusion: one of the most popular genres was dystopian fiction—stories that detail how the f
I have 1,218 friends on Facebook, but to be honest, I’m not really “friends” with all of them—in the truest sense of the word. In fact, I’m not even friends with most of them. Many of them have come about as a direct result of my being an author and writer. Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not trying to say that I’m famous, well-known, or even well-lik
Several years ago, the common refrain from my daughter used to be: “I’m soooooo boooorrrred!” She doesn’t do it anymore, because her mother and I decided that the best way to cure her boredom would be…more homework! However, that comment is becoming all too common these days—and by non-teenage-age folks as well. I find it interesting that people—at
Recently I was watching a documentary (which I love to do—much to my family’s dismay) about the country of Turkey and its varied wildlife. The documentary discussed the amazing lives of some incredible animals, but what I found to be the most interesting were two dung beetles fighting to the death . . . over poo! One beetle, greedily clinging to it
When my grandfather died, I was in my early twenties. During his final illness, I flew from Chattanooga, Tennessee, and met up with my brother in Atlanta, Georgia. From there we flew nonstop to Puerto Rico. Once we arrived we went directly to the hospital where he was. I remember seeing a shadow of a man in a hospital bed who didn’t look like my gr
When I was a kid growing up in Florida, I remember the shock of being told that my grandmother was coming to visit from Puerto Rico. The sickening feelings I had in the pit of my stomach were akin to having a stomach flu, taking a test unprepared, or the worst of the worst: turning on the TV only to find out that the President was on . . . on all T
