Faith & Life Inspirational Message

With a title like this one, you might expect this to be a reflection by someone who has just survived a near-death experience.   It could be one who escaped from a nasty car accident or a near-miss airplane landing.   Lucky to be alive sounds like the relieved words of someone who stood in front of death’s door and turned around to walk away.   “Praise the Lord,” we expect to hear them mutter. But my reflections have nothing of the drama suggested in the first paragraph.   I have not had a near-death experience.   I have certainly thought about dying and being dead, as I suppose is natural for anyone my age.   I have fortunately never been in a nasty car accident.   I have had some scary enough (for me) plane takeoffs and landings, but nothing that was disastrous.   So I guess I have lived a fairly eventful, normal---maybe---boring life.             That does not mean I cannot feel lu...

Even though I read quite a bit, there is always more to read.   In fact, I am sure I am losing ground on all the new stuff out there.   That is probably true even in the world of religion and spirituality.   I am sure there is more being published---in print and on line---than any one person can read.   Rather than get discouraged, I simply hope to get my hands on some of the good ones.   My memory may be faulty, but I recollect that some person at Harvard in the early 1700s was the last person who had read all the books in Harvard’s library.   I know first-hand the library system there is amazing.   It is (I believe) the third largest in this country, after the Library of Congress and the New York Public Library.   Even when I think about my little college, I realize there is no way I could read all the volumes.   However, I occasionally come across a book that I say, “I must read that one.”   This happened just recently when I wa...