daily life as life goes on . . .

I have been over the years a news hound.  I seem to be able to sniff out trends and dig up references.  Maybe that’s my early training.  Here are two examples.

When I was in grade eight, I went with the family to the Royal Winter Fair in Toronto.  This was the agricultural exhibit for Ontario.  There were horses and other live animals.  AND there were manufacturer exhibits!

How I enjoyed collecting all the brochures.  I even went home and categorized them.  Then I sent out the pre-stamped information cards to the various equipment companies.  I was learning so much, both about silage and sewage.

Then a representative of one of the companies phoned our home, asking for me.  Well, I wasn’t going to buy any of their equipment, nor were my parents (we lived in the middle of Toronto at the time). 

That shut down my information gathering project.  But the desire was not extinguished.

Jump to grade ten.  We are now in a smaller town just outside Toronto.  A current affairs project is due in my history class.  We are to check out present political happenings in newspapers that are accessible to us (which I took as being newspapers delivered to our home).  Thus, with no accessible newspapers (we didn’t get newspapers at the time), and no content for the paper, my grade was a dismal failure.

I did not like failure.  I decided to find everything I could about assignments that were given to me.  That spark of research has not been extinguished in my life.

Thus, the news hound!

Just for my Philosophy and Practice of Ministry class students – here’s some of the practices of ministry instituted on this day.   Taken from my Church History daily newsletter from CT.

January 21, 1525: Conrad Grebel (Ulrich Zwingli’s former protege) rebaptizes George Blaurock, a former monk, in a secret, illegal meeting of six men in Zurich. This meeting is now considered the birth of the Anabaptist movement.

January 21, 1549: In the first of four Acts of Uniformity, the English Parliament requires all Anglican public services to exclusively use of The Book of Common Prayer.

I get a regular email from Christianity Today – Today in Christian History.  Here is one of today’s notices – regarding January 15, 1697.  I’m not sure I knew this, nor how this event transpired and what happened.  Makes me think.

January 15, 1697: Massachusetts citizens observe a day of fasting and repentance for the Salem witch trials of 1692, in which 19 suspected witches were hanged and more than 150 imprisoned. The day was declared “That so all of God’s people may offer up fervent supplications unto him, that all iniquity may be put away, which hath stirred God’s holy jealousy against this land; that he would show us what we know not, and help us, wherein we have done amiss, to do so no more”.

My wife and I have been doing house renovations for the last few years.  They are based in her eye for design and precision.  Walk into our house (after COVID??) and you will see beauty.

Reading today (https://www.ckom.com/2021/01/11/sask-home-builder-predicts-drop-in-lumber-prices-this-spring/ ), I was struck by what has been voiced in quiet but urgent distress.  Lumber prices have increased by as much as 200 – 300 % in the last year.

Here is one of the final lines of the article:  ““At the end of the day, the price of a home will increase and affordability will be eroded. It especially impacts markets like ours that are still very affordable.”