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Background to the nativity story. A Christmas meditation.

There is a river flowing along in a gentle slope toward the sea. A boatman is upon it. His vessel is here, then it is there, and soon it will be at the river’s mouth. Only that part of the river upon which he is sailing is present to him. But up yonder, on a lofty mountain, stands a traveler. As he looks…

When I was visiting one of our sick friends he uttered a sentence that stuck to me. He said, “I have had some education for heaven in attending the Metropolitan Tabernacle.” “How is that?” “Because I have been used to worship with a great company of godly people, used to join in the songs of great multitudes,…

When the Portuguese captain first went by the Cape of Storms it was a venturous voyage, and he called it the Cape of Good Hope when he had rounded it. When Columbus first went in search of the New World, his was a brave spirit that dared cross the unnavigated Atlantic. But there are tens of thousands…

In some of the houses not far from here, I noticed some linnets in cages, in which there were tufts of grass or small branches of trees as perches for the poor prisoners; yet they were singing away right merrily. I suppose that grass and those fragments of trees were meant to remind them, in this great,…

I like the remark of the people who were requested to accept a Universalist as a minister. They said, “You have come to tell us that there is no hell. If your doctrine is true, we certainly do not need you; and if it is not true, we do not want you. Either way, we can do without you.” It is a most dreadful…

A “richly supplied” entrance has sometimes been illustrated in this way. You see yonder ship. After a long voyage, it has neared the haven, but is much injured; the sails are rent to ribbons, and it is in such a forlorn condition that it cannot come up to the harbor: a steam-tug is pulling it in with…

At present, it is with us as it is with the world during the winter. If you had not seen the miracle wrought again and again, you would not guess, when you look upon those black beds in the garden, or when you walk over that snowy and frosty covering, crisp and hard beneath your feet, that the earth…

There were two brothers, one of whom had been diligently attentive to his worldly business, to the neglect of true religion. He succeeded in accumulating considerable wealth. The other brother was diligent in the service of the Master, and had learned both to distribute to the poor and for conscience’s…

Alan Sinclair does not want his death to be permanent. After he dies, his blood will be flushed from his body and replaced with antifreeze. Technicians will then cool the body with dry ice and fly it to a cryonics center in Michigan. The center will keep it at minus 320 degrees. When a solution is found…

While visiting the grave of a loved one, a woman in Brazil was given the shock of her life. She was laying flowers when a man started digging himself out of a neighboring grave. “The mourner heard some strange moaning and noticed the soil moving around in a neighboring plot.” The woman ran off and called…

Though the audience was limited due to pandemic restrictions, hundreds gathered at St. Burchardi Church in Halberstadt to hear the organ change chords on September 5, 2020. The organ in playing an experimental piece of music called Organ/ASLSP written by John Cage in the 1980s. The organ had been playing…

The makers of the board game Monopoly have created a new version of the game that promises to make the seemingly endless game even longer. The new board has an outer track and an inner track containing 96 spaces, compared to 40 on the original. There are 66 properties, 12 railroads and six utilities.…

When a person dies, their loved ones who are left behind want to find ways to remember them. In Cleveland, Ohio a Father-son duo, Michael and Kyle Sherwood have started a company to help. Their company, Save My Ink Forever, proposes to skin the tattoos off the corpses and turn them into framed artwork.…

Since rumors of a fountain of youth surfaced centuries ago, humans have been looking for a way to live forever. A new high-tech attempt is linking your brain to a computer, creating a digital replica, and uploading it to the computer. You enter a booth, scan and upload your mind to a server, then download…

NASA has plans for private citizens to spend up to 30 days in the International Space Station. It might be a little expensive for most of us, $35,000 per night. And that doesn’t include the trip to get there. That will add another $52 million dollars to the trip. That is quite the fee just to get out…

Twilight Breaking Dawn part 2 premiered in the movie theaters on November 16, 2012. Advanced ticket sales broke previous records. The twilight series is based on a love story between a young woman and a vampire. The film makers make it seem so romantic that vampires don’t age and they life forever. The…

The Camp Fire reduced Paradise, CA to ashes. Jeff McClenahan, a 53-year-old college professor, returned to his home in Paradise and “found it destroyed, burned to the foundation.” As he stared in disbelief, he dropped to his knees and sobbed, “Its stuff. But it’s a lot of history. Everything, our whole…

While 47 years is not eternity, there are times it may feel like it. One toddler got possession of his mom’s cell phone. He repeatedly entered the wrong passcode. He did it so many times that when mom got home she discovered the phone’s security protection had disabled the phone for 25 million minutes.…

During the closing moments of the season three finale of Supernatural, the show ends with a cliffhanger. The younger of the Winchester brothers, Sam, kneels crying over the remains of his older brother, Dean. The audience expects the show to be over; however, the writers have a final twist. The camera…

An investor who put $10,000 in Amazon’s initial public offering in 1997 would have nearly $5 million today. Amazon’s valuation of $464 billion is now twice that of Wal-Mart. Putting some perspective on Amazon’s dominance, just 12 percent of the companies on the 1955 Fortune 500 list are still on the…

When Paul McCartney took the stage (twice) at the 2012 Grammy Awards, Twitter exploded not with praise but confusion. “Who is Paul McCartney?” became a trending topic on the micro-blogging site. --Time, February 27, 2012, p. 50 Illustration by Jim L. Wilson and Rodger Russell Paul McCartney, one of the…

In a 60 minutes interview on CBS, Walter Isaacson, the author of the biography Steve Jobs, tells about Steve Jobs talking about God. Jobs said, "Sometimes I believe in God, sometimes I don't. I think it's 50-50 maybe. But ever since I've had cancer, I've been thinking about it more. And I find myself…