For God’s Sake Archive

As I write this, my wife and I are preparing to leave for Indiana for a two-week vacation visiting family.

Our goal is to eat lots of vine-ripened tomatoes and sweet corn, and at least one pork tenderloin sandwich.

I was in the first grade at Sacred Heart Catholic school when Sister Eileen read to us from Exodus 16, “The Israelites called the food manna. It was white like coriander seed, and it tasted like honey wafers.”

I didn’t hear anything else she read or said. In my little kid-brain I was scurrying around the wilderness gathering up this mysterious candy God had provided.

The condominium collapse in Surfside was profoundly tragic. Daily news updates only confirmed our worst fears. Hope seemed so very elusive, yet stories of hope did emerge.

The Associated Press ran a story about a 12-year-old girl, who had come to the collapse site because her father and her uncle were residents of that building and had yet to be found.

Recently, I did something that I had purposed I would never do – I engaged a social media post that was obviously intended only to incite.

A friend posted a meme claiming that 56% of conservative Christians reacted in laughable ignorance to a statement that employed a generic word close in spelling to one which was sure to elicit a negative reaction from them.

It is interesting how habits creep their way in and out of our lives.

When I arrived in Navarre late in 2018, it was my habit to work out four to five days a week.

Helen Keller wrote, “I cried because I had no shoes until I met a man with no feet.”

Blind for most of her life, Keller’s fame as an author and human rights activist shows that she chose not to wallow in self-pity. I must confess, I have wallowed in the past, only recently in fact.

It is a fact of life that not everything is as it appears; expectations are often dashed by disappointment.

What sparked this cheery thought? I had carefully studied a small basket of apples in my kitchen to select a perfect orb of crunchy deliciousness.

I was perusing some old photos of my parents from early in their marriage and found it strange to see them acting playfully like two young people in love.

I have no doubt that they loved one another, I just don’t recall seeing that playfulness growing up. Having brought nine children into this world, life was not easy for them.

Whenever Apple introduces a new iPhone, eager crowds line up in the predawn hours outside Apple stores hoping to be one of the first to get the latest.

My wife and I have never been in that crowd; we keep our phones until they will not work anymore.

I got my second “jab,” as the Brits call the COVID-19 vaccine, and the “jabber” was good. I did not feel a thing, nor did I experience any significant side effects.

Now, depending on whom you care to believe, I am either safe from the coronavirus … or I am not.