Merry Christmas!! And Happy final day of the 12 Days of Blogmas!! In the classic Christmas song, "Oh Holy Night", there is the great line: "Long lay the world, in sin and error pining, Till He appeared and the soul felt its worth." I've always liked that line, "the soul felt its worth." We as... Continue Reading →
Happy Day 11 of The 12 Days of Blogmas! Christmas as we know it today has a pretty disjointed history. It’s a jumbled hodgepodge of pagan traditions, Christian traditions, commercial marketing, and lots of secular traditions. I’m no theologian, but quite a lot of the religious aspects of the holiday that are celebrated are acknowledged... Continue Reading →
Three years ago, during my last blogmas challenge, I wrote a post about Martin Luther King Jr.’s Christmas Sermon on Peace. The post includes a link to the audio of that sermon, and it’s worth a listen. I closed that blog post by referencing another sermon that Dr. King gave, and it is that sermon... Continue Reading →
Because he was such a prolific writer of essays, we know exactly what C.S. Lewis thought about a wide variety of topics including Christmas. Turns out, he had some pretty relatable and amusing thoughts, even though fans of the Father Christmas character in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe might be surprised that the... Continue Reading →
The Christmas season of 1944 along the German-Belgian border seems an unlikely setting for an uplifting Christmas story, but that year nothing short of a small miracle happened there. The Battle of the Bulge, Germany’s last effort offensive campaign was raging. It was to be the bloodiest battle for American forces during WWII with 19,000... Continue Reading →
Several weeks ago, my Uncle Ron came by our house one evening and brought me a box of old photos, post cards, and letters that had been my grandfather’s. Ron’s wife, my Aunt Barbara, passed away in 2014 and had held on to these things after her parents (my grandparents) passed away. Ron has recently... Continue Reading →
Happy Father’s Day! As is true of many things when you try to trace their origins, there is some conflicting history about the roots of this holiday. The two prominent stories about the beginnings of Father’s Day in the United States happened around the same time on opposite sides of the nation. And both are... Continue Reading →
Two weeks ago at church, my 14 month old was getting a little extra rambunctious and I took her out to the lobby to keep from disrupting everyone around us. At the church we attend, there is a shelf set up with an assortment of pamphlets about various topics and as I paced back and... Continue Reading →
Here in middle Tennessee, the local news stations appear to be enjoying giving frequent reminders that our state is about to play host to the cicadas of Brood XIX. This is the brood that comes around every 13 years. I vividly remember sitting in my office at work thirteen years ago as a 27 year... Continue Reading →
Back in 2018, after being diagnosed with pre-endometrial cancer in my endometrial lining, I did something strange as I began the visits with the oncologist and started treatment. I began to knit a baby blanket. Seeing as how I had never really knit anything before and I was as seemingly as far away from having... Continue Reading →
Rachel F. Jean 